Last Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  I nodded. That sounded like the way it must have happened. Edgar, already obsessed by the idea of reaching the artifact, had found Arina. Together they had coopted Saushkin, who was thirsting for vengeance, into their “Last Watch.” And they had set to work. An Inquisitor who had access to an absolutely vast repository of magical amulets; a highly intelligent witch who had become a Light One; a Higher Vampire who was going insane with grief for his son and his wife...

  A sorry sort of crew they made.

  But a terrible one.

  “Aren’t you afraid that the Crown will become your mistake, Arina? In the same way that Mordred was Merlin’s?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I am a bit afraid of that... Well. Tell me, did we make a mistake by taking you prisoner? Have you found a way to get hold of the Crown of All Things?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Merlin deliberately confused the question of the seventh level. Only a zero-point Other can enter the kingdom of the dead.”

  “The withdrawn,” Gennady corrected me without any malice in his voice. “Not the dead, the withdrawn.”

  Why was that such a sore point with him? Because he wasn’t alive?

  “I think it’s impossible too,” Arina said, nodding. “If I had the Fuaran, I could have raised Edgar to the zero-point level. But without the book it’s difficult. I remembered some things, I managed to rewrite a few others, and somehow or other I raised him to the Higher level. But I obviously don’t have the skill to rival the Fuaran... So what were your thoughts?”

  “The Crown of All Things is on the fifth level,” I said. “You could have taken it two weeks ago!”

  Arina narrowed her eyes and peered at me. And I started telling her all the nonsense I’d fed to Edgar and Gennady on the plane. About taking a step back. About the head and the tail. About the golem.

  “You’re probably lying, I suppose,” Arina said pensively. “It all fits so well... But it’s a bit simple for old Merlin, don’t you think? Well?”

  “I think he’s lying too,” Gennady suddenly put in, backing her up. He hadn’t shown any real sign of trusting me on the plane either. “We ought to have taken the daughter... .”

  “Gena, don’t you even dream in your worst nightmare of ever touching that little girl!” Arina said in a warning tone. “Is that clear?”

  “Of course,” said Gennady, suddenly changing his tune.

  “Well then, sorcerer, are you telling the truth or lying?” Arina asked, looking into my eyes. “Eh?”

  “The truth?” I said, leaning forward. The only thing that could save me now was fury... and frankness, of course. “Who do you take me for, Merlin? How should I know the truth? They hung this brute around my neck, threatened to blow up my wife and daughter—together with half of Moscow—and then ordered me to tell them how to get the artifact! How do I know if I’m right or not? I thought about it. It seems to me that this could be the right answer! But nobody, including me, can give you any guarantees!”

  “ ‘Just what do you want from me, my darling cutthroats’... Maybe I should sing ‘Murka’ for you?” Edgar said suddenly.

  I didn’t immediately realize that he was joking about ‘Murka,’ the traditional Russian song about betrayal. He didn’t often make jokes.

  “But there could be something to this story of his, after all,” Edgar added, giving me a hostile look. “It sounds like the truth.”

  Arina sighed. She spread her hands and said, “Well then, all we can do now is verify it. Let’s go.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Edgar promised to take the Cat off me.”

  “If you promised, then take it off,” Arina told him after a moment’s thought. “But don’t forget, Anton, that you may be powerful now, but there are three of us, and we’re as strong as you are. Don’t even think about pulling any tricks.”

  .

  .

  A COMMON DESTINY

  Chapter 6

  Gennady was driving. Apparently Edgar and Arina thought that they could restrain me better if I attempted to escape or attack them. I was sitting in the backseat with Edgar on my left and Arina on my right.

  But I didn’t attempt to attack or to escape, they had too many trump cards up their sleeves. Now that they had taken the Cat off my neck, the skin where the fluffy strap had been was scratched and itchy.

  “They’re guarding the Crown much more seriously now,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid of a massacre, Arina? Will your conscience be able to handle it?”

  “We’ll manage without bloodshed,” Arina replied confidently. “As far as that’s possible.”

  I doubted very much that it was possible, but I didn’t try to argue. I looked out in silence at the suburbs we were driving through, as if I was hoping to see Lermont or his deputy and at least be able to warn them with a look or a gesture...

  If I tried to get away, they would almost certainly catch me. I had to wait.

  The day was just declining into evening; it was the busiest time for tourists, but today Edinburgh seemed quite different from two weeks earlier. The people on the streets seemed somehow muted and joyless, the sky was obscured by a light haze, and the birds circling overhead seemed alarmed by something.

  So, apparently everything in the world could sense the approaching cataclysm, including people and birds... .

  The cell phone in my pocket jangled. Edgar was startled and tensed up. I looked inquiringly at Arina.

  “Answer it, but be discreet,” she said.

  I looked at the phone. It was Svetlana. “Hello.”

  As ill luck would have it, the connection was excellent. You would never have suspected that we were thousands of kilometers apart.

  “Are you still working, Anton?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m driving in the car.”

  Arina was watching me closely. She was bound to be able to hear every word that Svetlana said.

  “I deliberately didn’t call. They told me something had happened... some terrorists or other, pumped full of magic... is that why you’re late?”

  A faint spark of hope began to glimmer in my breast. I wasn’t late yet! Svetlana couldn’t have been expecting me home from work so early.

  “Yes, of course, that’s why,” I said.

  Come on, now, guess! Use magic! You can find out where I am now. Raise the alarm. Warn Gesar, and he’ll get in touch with Lermont. If the Edinburgh Night Watch are expecting an attack, that will be the end of the Last Watch.

  “Make sure you don’t get stuck for too long,” Svetlana told me. “Surely you have enough people working for you to manage all these things? Don’t take everything on yourself. OK?”

  “Of course I won’t,” I said.

  “Is Semyon with you?” Svetlana asked casually.

  Before I could answer, Arina shook her head. Of course, if Svetlana suspected something, she could phone Semyon after I said yes.

  “No,” I said, “I’m on my own. I’ve got a separate job to do.”

  “Do you want me to help? I’m getting a bit bored sitting at home,” Svetlana said, and laughed.

  Arina was alarmed and tense now.

  “Don’t be silly, this is nothing special,” I said. “Just an inspection visit.”

  “As long as you’re sure,” said Svetlana, sounding a bit disappointed. “Call me if you get completely stuck. Oi, Nadya’s trundling something around. Bye... ”

  She cut off the call and I started to put the phone away in my pocket. Trying to keep cool while looking straight into Arina’s relaxed face, I pressed three buttons on the phone: Incoming Calls—Call Last Number—Off.

  That was all. I couldn’t risk leaving the phone switched on. Arina might hear the ringing tone from inside my pocket. Had the call gone through? Had the international telephone network managed to process it befor
e it was canceled? I didn’t know. I could only put my hope in the greed of the cell phone network operators—it was more profitable for them to put the call through and debit my account.

  And also, of course, I put my hope in Svetlana’s common sense. When her phone rang and then stopped again, she would have to use magic instead of trying to call me back. Arina and Edgar were far older than me. For them a cell phone would always be a portable version of a cumbersome apparatus into which one had to shout, “Young lady! Young lady! Give me the Smolny Institute!”

  “She suspected something,” Edgar said to Arina. “You shouldn’t have done that with the bomb... it didn’t have to be detonated, but at least we would have had a trump card in reserve!”

  “Never mind,” said Arina. “Even if she did suspect something, they don’t have any time. Anton, give me that phone.”

  A glint of suspicion had appeared in her eyes. I gave her the cell without saying anything, handing it to her gingerly with the tips of my fingers and not touching the keys.

  Arina looked at the phone and saw that it was in waiting mode. She shrugged and switched it off completely.

  “Let’s do without any calls, all right? If you need to call anyone, you can ask me for my phone.”

  “I won’t bankrupt you?”

  “No, you won’t.” Arina took out her own phone and dialed a number—not from the contacts list, but the old way, pressing every key. She raised the phone to her ear and waited for an answer. When it came she said quietly, “It’s time. Go to work.”

  “Still haven’t run out of accomplices, then?”

  “They’re not accomplices, Anton, they’re hired hands. People can be perfectly effective allies if you equip them with a small number of amulets. Especially the kind that Edgar has.”

  I looked at the stately royal castle towering above the city, crowning the remains of an ancient volcano now forever extinct. Well, well, this was the second time I’d ended up in Edinburgh, and I still didn’t have time to visit its main tourist attraction... .

  “And what have you prepared this time?” I asked There was an idea flickering on the edge of my consciousness, scratching away at it like Schrödinger’s Cat. Something very important.

  “Funnily enough, I’ve actually prepared one of Merlin’s artifacts,” Edgar said. He had by now recovered from my un-gentlemanly blow. “It’s called Merlin’s Sleep.”

  “Ah, yes, he was rather uninventive with his names for things,” I said with a nod. “ ‘Sleep’?”

  “Just Sleep,” Edgar said, shrugging. “Arina was very upset about the high number of casualties the last time. This time it will all be very... civilized.”

  “Ah, and there’s the first little spark of civilization,” I said, looking at the smoke rising from a taxi stopped in front of us. The driver had clearly fallen asleep as he took a curve, and his car had run up onto the sidewalk and crashed into an old building. But the most terrible thing was not the smoke coming from under the taxi’s hood, or even the motionless bodies inside it. The sidewalks were covered with the motionless bodies of locals and tourists—and one young woman had clearly been knocked aside by the taxi’s radiator and then crushed against the wall by its old-fashioned black box of a body. She was probably dying. The only thing I could be glad about was that she was dying in her sleep.

  This was not the humane Morpheus spell that we learned in the Night Watch, the one that gave people several seconds before they lost consciousness. Merlin’s Sleep acted instantly. And it was very precisely localized: I could see the boundary line of the artifact’s influence. Two adults stepped inside it and fell to the ground, instantly overcome by sleep. But the seven-or eight-year-old boy who had been walking a few steps behind them was still awake, and now he was crying as he tugged his motionless parents from just over the zone. He had little prospect of help—those people who had not yet entered the zone of sleep were running away from it with remarkable alacrity. I could understand why. To someone who didn’t know the truth, it all looked like the effect of some highly poisonous gas. And somehow, the sight of this little boy trying to get his parents to their feet on the other side of the scattering crowd was almost as tragic as the sight of the young woman killed in the crash.

  Edgar continued gazing fixedly at the smoking taxi after we had driven past it. That would probably have been a good moment to escape... if I had been intending to escape.

  “Does that remind you of something?” I asked.

  “Incidental casualties are inevitable,” Edgar said in a voice that had turned flat and hoarse. “I knew what I was getting into.”

  “What a pity they didn’t,” I said. And I looked at Edgar through the Twilight.

  This was bad, very bad. He was hung all over with amulets, dozens of charms had been applied to him, and there were spells trembling on the tips of his fingers, ready to dart off at any moment. He was positively glowing with Power waiting to be used. Arina and Gennady looked exactly the same. Even the vampire had not scorned the magical trinkets.

  I wouldn’t be able to manage by using force.

  We drove to the Dungeons in total silence, past sidewalks strewn with bodies and motionless vehicles (I saw three that were burning). We got out of the car.

  On Princes Street, on the other side of the ravine, everything had stopped dead too, but I could already hear a siren howling somewhere. People always recover from a panic. Even if they don’t know what it is they’re up against.

  “Let’s go,” said Edgar, pushing me gently in the back.

  We set off down the stairs. I looked back for a moment at the stone crown of the castle above the roofs of the buildings.

  Why, yes! Of course. You only had to think for a moment and put it all together. Merlin had been most magnanimous when he composed his little verse...

  “What are you dawdling for?” Edgar shouted at me. His nerves were on edge, and no wonder. He was anticipating a meeting with the one he loved.

  We walked past more motionless bodies. There were people and Others; Merlin’s Sleep didn’t differentiate between them. I noticed several sleeping Inquisitors. Behind the fake dividing walls everything was lit up brightly by the glow of auras. They had been waiting, and the ambush could not have been prepared any better.

  Only, no one had known the full power of the artifact that had been used.

  “You haven’t forgotten about the barrier on the third level, I suppose?” I asked.

  “No,” said Arina.

  I noticed that, as we walked along, first Edgar and then Arina left perfectly innocent-looking objects charged with magic on the floor and the walls: scraps of paper, sticks of chewing gum, bits of string. In one place Edgar rapidly sketched several strange symbols on the wall in red chalk—the chalk crumbling into dust as soon as he had traced out the final sign. In another place Arina smiled as she scattered a box of matches across the floor. The Last Watch was clearly afraid of being pursued.

  Eventually we entered the room with the guillotine, which for some reason the Last Watch had chosen as its point of entry into the Twilight. This was probably the exact center of the vortex, the precise focus of Power.

  And here, in addition to the two first-level magicians who were asleep, there was one person who was wide awake.

  He was a young man, short and plump, wearing spectacles on his cultured-looking face. He looked very peaceful and nonaggressive in his jeans and bright-colored shirt. In the corner of the room I noticed a girl about ten years old, sleeping with her head resting on a bag that had been considerately placed underneath it. Had they decided to open the way through with the blood of a child, then?

  “My daughter fell asleep,” the man said, correcting my mistaken assumption. “An extremely interesting device, I must say... .” He took out a small sphere woven out of strips of metal from his pocket. “The lever shifted, and i
t won’t move back again.”

  “That’s the way it should be,” said Edgar. “It won’t move back again for seventy-something years. So the device is useless to you; leave it here. Take this!”

  He tossed a wad of money to the man, who caught it and casually ran his finger over the ends of the notes. But I noticed that he was keeping his left hand behind his back. Uh-oh...

  “All correct,” the man said with a nod. “But I’m a little concerned about the scale of the event... and the devices that you employ. It seems to me that the deal was clearly made on unequal terms.”

  “I told you this would happen,” Edgar said to Arina. He turned back to the man and asked, “What do you want? More money?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Take the money and your daughter, and go. That’s my advice to you,” said Arina.

  The man licked his lips and then unbuttoned his shirt.

  He turned out not to be fat at all. His torso was encased in something that looked like a back brace. Except that it had wires protruding from it.

  “A kilogram of plastic explosive. The switch works on the ‘dead hand’ principle,” said the man, raising his left hand. “I’m going to take that sphere, all the strange trinkets that I found on these guys”—he prodded one of the sleeping Others with his foot—“and everything you have in your pockets. Is that clear?”

  “As clear as day,” said Edgar. “I said right at the beginning that this would happen. I made the right choice with you.”

  I suddenly noticed that Gennady was no longer there with us.

  “And this resolves a certain number of moral difficulties,” Edgar continued, turning away.

  The explosives belt suddenly flew into little pieces. It wasn’t an explosion; it looked like the work of a clawed hand moving with unnatural speed... out of the Twilight, for example. Totally confused, the man opened his left hand, and a small switch with an absurd little tail of wire fell out of it. He’d been telling the truth.