“I’m a moron,” I said, and my wife and daughter turned around.
“Well look at that! Dad’s brought the salad!” Still laughing, Nadya took the fork off the tray and picked up a bit of food. “Delicious!”
Svetlana looked at me in alarm.
“What is it? What’s happened?” she asked.
“I came because you called me,” I said. “You just called and ask me to come immediately in a very frightened-sounding voice.”
“Mum didn’t call!” said Nadya, telling me the obvious. Her smile still lingered.
“That’s the problem, little one,” I said. “That’s the problem!”
“Keep calm,” said Svetlana. “Nobody hitched a ride with you. Where did you open the portal from?”
“From our cafeteria,” I said, nodding at the tray. “From the office.”
“That’s a safe place,” said Svetlana, as if she were trying to convince herself. “Maybe it’s Gesar being clever, trying to find out where we are?”
“If it’s Gesar, he’s not just being clever, he’s being devious!” I said, annoyed. “Nadya, can you sense anything?”
But my daughter was already standing there with her arms flung out, peering into the Twilight. Every Other naturally develops their own individual stance to launch a particular spell. For instance, when I look hard into the Twilight, I lean forward slightly, pull my elbows in, lower my chin, and sort of glower from under my eyebrows. But Nadya does the opposite—she opens her arms, throws her head back, and closes her eyes.
“Nothing, Dad,” she said, shaking herself and opening her eyes. “Everything . . . everything’s blocked off. Everything’s as usual. On all the levels.”
Our refuge really was isolated on all levels of the Twilight. Only the portal, which had to be opened by one of us, could bring someone here. Of course, we couldn’t see anything from the refuge either; the only thing Nadya could do was check that the defenses were intact.
“What could anyone tell from watching me teleport?” I asked. I picked up the glass of cognac off the table and drank it. Svetlana, feeling a bit calmer now, wagged her finger at me. “Someone tricked me. But what for? Just for a joke?”
“The most anyone could discover is the vector of displacement,” said Nadya. “I’ve just realized that if you monitor all the levels of the Twilight simultaneously, you can determine the direction. Like a line, a shadow, across the surface of the earth.”
Svetlana and I looked at Nadya.
“I couldn’t watch all the levels like that,” our daughter confessed. “And even if you figure out the direction, you still can’t tell where to look next, what the distance is.”
“But of course you can!” said Svetlana. “It’s where the line runs into an invisible barrier in the Twilight. You just follow it until you bang your head against a wall. Smack! You can’t see the wall, but you’ll run right into it.”
“And the barrier’s impenetrable,” Nadya sighed. “Stupid, right?”
“We’re leaving,” Svetlana said with a nod, getting up off the sofa. “Nadya, open a portal. To the Watch office.”
“Which one?” our daughter asked briskly.
“It doesn’t matter. Wherever’s easier. Day Watch, Night Watch, that’s not important right now!”
Nadya nodded. She wrinkled up her face, frowned, and smiled guiltily.
“It’s not working. Everything’s drifting . . . I can’t take aim . . .”
I suddenly remembered I was still holding the tray in my hands.
“This is a tray from the Watch cafeteria,” I said. “Can you pick up the trail?”
Svetlana looked at me indignantly and twirled her finger beside her temple.
“Are you talking to your daughter or a dog?”
But Nadya wasn’t concerned about such subtle points. She took the tray and stared at it.
Objects preserve memories. About where and when they were made and about people they have belonged to. In this particular tray there was a memory of a factory that produced polyvinylchloride resin, and of the location of the cafeteria in the Watch building.
“Yes, that’s easier,” Nadya said delightedly. “Just a moment . . .”
She ran her palm across the tray, catching a drop of dressing that had fallen off the salad. She looked at her hand, frowned, took out a paper handkerchief, and wiped off the dressing. Then she put her hand back on the tray . . .
Looking at my daughter, I thought about how some things have to be learned. And how your genetic background, individual aptitudes, and unique abilities are no help at all in such cases.
You might find that everything in life comes easily. You might have the fingers of a Paganini, the looks of a Marlon Brando, add perfect pitch and a Stradivarius violin into the bargain. But show up late for your first solo concert at the Santori Hall in Tokyo or the Golden Hall in Vienna and the disappointed critics will vilify and revile you.
It’s not because you’re an idiot. It’s because, for instance, you didn’t build enough time into your plans for the traffic jams in Tokyo, or you didn’t set your watch forward to Viennese time. The mistake will be petty, absurd, and disastrous.
When you’re at war and the enemy is close at hand, you don’t fiddle with tissues in your pocket. If the dirt on your fingers bothers you so much, if you really have to wipe your hand, you wipe it on your clothes. A few seconds can decide everything, or almost everything.
This is something you only learn from life.
I sensed the final moments that we had been granted to escape draining away. I couldn’t even shout to make Nadya hurry—she needed to maintain her concentration. If she couldn’t open the portal, then things were very, very bad indeed . . .
“Just a moment, Dad,” Nadya whispered. “Just a moment . . .”
The air darkened, forming the aperture of a portal. I caught Svetlana’s joyful glance and I felt really delighted myself.
And then the building was shaken by a heavy blow.
The TV pitched forward and fell off the table, the dishes started jangling in the cupboard, cracks ran across the walls. Nadya staggered and dropped the tray. The portal that had almost taken shape disappeared.
She cried out as if she was in pain and went limp—I caught her by the shoulders and froze, gazing around. Whatever was happening, it didn’t seem like a magical attack. Or even like an earthquake—and anyway, what kind of earthquake could there be in St. Petersburg?
“Nadya, what’s wrong with you?” asked Svetlana. My daughter started moving and straightened up awkwardly.
“They broke off the portal so abruptly I wasn’t expecting it.”
She seemed more bewildered than hurt. I tried to imagine what it was like to have your spell suddenly broken off like that. And I couldn’t. I’d never had that experience.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We started moving toward the door—and then there was another blow.
A more powerful one.
The wall with the bricked-up window in it cracked and bulged inward like a blister. The air was filled with mortar and brick dust. Some of the bricks poked out into the room.
“Quickly!” I shouted.
It was a solid door, very strong, made of steel, with the old wooden one neatly attached to it on the outside. And two strong locks—CISA locks might be common in Russia, but the “Banham” would have confounded any burglar. And three bolt bars as well—not just little bolts, but bars running right across the door.
I opened both locks and pulled back one of the bolt bars, and then the third blow struck. This time the old bricks gave way and came flying into the room.
They were followed by a cast-iron wrecking ball—a huge lump of metal on a cable. It burst in and hung there in the middle of the room for a moment. Time seemed to stand still; I saw broken bricks frozen in midair (the mortar had taken such a strong grip that the bricks broke in half, instead of parting at the joints). The battered sphere had once been painted in cheerful blue and yellow
tones, but now the paint had flaked away, exposing dirty-gray metal. It was bathed in surprisingly bright sunlight from the enclosed inner courtyard, and standing there in the courtyard, almost completely filling it, was a crane . . .
I could just make out two figures in the cabin.
I didn’t waste any time thinking, just swung my hand and severed the cable on which the lump of iron was suspended. It worked. The ball started swinging back, but deprived of support, it slammed down into the floor, smashing halfway through it and blocking the hole in the wall. To add to the fun for our attackers, I flung a Sha’ab’s Ring over it—that’s a spell from the arsenal of the Higher Dark Ones. Now it would be very, very difficult to get in through the hole.
If we hadn’t been dealing with the Two-in-One, I would have said it was impossible.
I was encouraged by the fact that the vampire god hadn’t yet tried to attack our magical defenses, but had set about breaking into the apartment by human means. His powers weren’t unlimited after all.
“Anton!”
The door was already open—for the first time in many years—and I darted out into the stairwell after my wife and daughter. Just as I was pulling the door closed behind me, there was a sudden flash; a bright glow surged out through gap around the door and it was slammed hard against the frame.
The Two-in-One hadn’t gone for anything fancy, but had just tossed a Fireball into the gap. If the apartment hadn’t been an absolutely isolated “box,” protected by magic, the entire stairwell would have been set ablaze.
“I left my handbag behind!” Svetlana shouted indignantly, without looking back as she ran down the steep steps. She was holding Nadya by the hand. I dashed after them, but the door of the next-door apartment opened in front of me so suddenly that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the smirking faces of the Two-in-One.
But instead it was an old lady, with a hooked nose, cataracts in her eyes, and long, tangled gray hair. At a witches’ Sabbath or a convention of fantasy fiction fans, she would have been harangued mercilessly for sticking too closely to the traditional image of a witch.
But then the way the old woman was dressed would never have done as a costume for a role-playing convention. No one ever dresses up as a witch in bright-yellow Bermuda shorts down to the knees and a T-shirt bearing a picture of a cat waving its paw. I got the feeling that this granny had either robbed her great-grandson or gone gaga and imagined that she was a young girl again.
But despite everything—the frightening, senile appearance and the inappropriate clothes— she had an incredibly respectable, even aristocratic air about her. St. Petersburg is probably the only place where you’ll see that, in the old buildings in the center, where the most stubborn apartment owners live, the ones who stood up against the bandits in the nineties and the nouveau riche in the aughts . . .
“Young man!” the old woman exclaimed in a surprisingly loud voice. “We don’t slam doors around here!”
“I won’t do it again,” I promised as I ran by.
“Are you Vera Savvovna’s grandnephew?”
“No,” I shouted up from the next floor down.
“It’s three years since you attended a Landlord’s Future Cooperative meeting,” the old woman shouted after me reproachfully.
But we were on the ground floor already.
We looked at each other for a few seconds, gathering ourselves. Then Svetlana nodded. I swung open the door and walked out of the hallway.
Or rather, out of the front entrance, as they say in St. Petersburg.
Svetlana maintained the shields as usual, and I prepared to attack, although the failure of my previous attempt didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. But this time we had Nadya with us—an inexhaustible source of Power . . .
Only there weren’t any enemies.
It was an ordinary street in St. Petersburg, covered in snow, enveloped in a light, frosty mist, but also bathed with sunlight for a change. It was incredibly beautiful—the high, clear sky, the blinding sunlight, the powdery snow swirling in the air. A tram went clanking past along its rails. A respectable four-door sedan followed it cautiously, the driver obviously wary of ice. The street was narrow here, with only two lanes, and even the tram line was one way.
“Something’s not right,” I said, shuddering from the cold. We could really have done with our coats; it was at least five degrees below freezing out in the street, and the air in St. Petersburg is very damp.
“No one’s around,” said Svetlana. “It looks like someone has set up a Sphere of Inattention here. Or something like that . . .”
“That’s bad news,” I said. “Let’s go!”
I walked off the pavement into the road and raised my hand to stop the rather chic French family car that was struggling to force its way along the snowbound street. Some metropolitan capital this city was, with the snow still uncleared at midday!
The woman driving the car stared at me with obvious suspicion, swung the wheel to move away from me, and sped up.
“Stop her!” Svetlana exclaimed.
“She’s got two children in the backseat,” I protested.
But it was too late. My wife made an abrupt gesture, as if she was jerking on something invisible, and the car halted with a squeal of brakes.
“I’ve got a child here too,” Svetlana declared, and ran toward the car.
The woman had obviously made an intuitive connection between us and her engine cutting out. She grabbed her cell phone and shouted something like: “Go away, I’m calling the police!”
But Svetlana had no intention of discussing anything. She opened the door, which was fortunately unlocked, and a moment later she had dragged the woman out from behind the wheel. To say the woman was dumbfounded would be a gross understatement. It would be fair to assume that this attractive young woman, pampered, well dressed with long legs, clearly wasn’t used to situations like this.
But all credit to her, she got her bearings quickly.
“Give me the children!” she howled, “Give me the children, you bastards!”
Svetlana was already in the driver’s seat. Nadya ran around the car and flopped into the seat beside her. In any other situation I would have been scandalized, but there was no time for that right now. I opened one of the rear doors: a boy and a girl, both about five years old, were sitting in their car seats. They were frightened, but at least they weren’t bawling. They could have been twins.
“Out we get,” I said cheerfully. “Mummy said you have to get out.”
And at that moment a rain of fire descended upon the car.
We all know that comparisons are odious, but this really did look like rain made of fire. The drops appeared somewhere high up in the sky, then fell, almost invisible in the sunlight, until they plunged into the snow with a hiss. As if someone had tipped over a tank of gas up there and set it alight.
The Magician’s Shield protected me from above as well as from the sides, but the shield was only two yards wide, and the rest of the street was already ablaze.
“Into the car,” I shouted to the woman before doubling up in order to squeeze through and sit between the two children. Drops of fire drummed loudly on the shield above my head.
The woman dashed around the car, keeping her hands on the hood, as if to prevent it from moving, and sat beside Nadya. My daughter didn’t try to argue, she just moved over. It was lucky that she and the woman were both thin.
“Let’s move!” I shouted, but Svetlana had already stepped on the accelerator. The car jerked forward with a squeal—it seemed to move even before the engine cut in.
“Cover me!” Svetlana snapped over her shoulder. “Nadya, give your father backup!”
Defense had always been her job. But then, she hadn’t coped the last time—so why not swap roles?
I summoned the Clear Gaze and the car around me turned colorless and blurred—its contours became vague and hard to focus on. The woman and the children froze, like dummies. The buildings towerin
g above us were empty and abandoned. The sky glimmered dully, with the transparent belt of dust and asteroids that takes the place of the moon on the first level stretching out across it. My eyes felt cold—not from the cold of the weather, but from the icy chill of the Twilight.
Svetlana was less affected by the changes; her skin simply turned slightly paler and her hair took on an ash-gray tint. Nadya didn’t change at all; her movements didn’t even slow down like everyone else’s do when you look at them from the Twilight. She turned around and nodded to me.
I looked deeper—the car changed shape, becoming something with a high roof, like a London cab, but semitransparent, as if it were made of glass. The sensation of cold grew even more intense, and it was joined by a feeling of pressure on my eyes—even just to look at, the second level of the Twilight wasn’t the most comfortable of places. The world changed too. The buildings were rapidly transformed into cliffs. The colors faded away completely and everything was veiled in thick, gray fog.
But three moons suddenly appeared in the sky—a small white one, a large yellow one, and an absolutely tiny one, blazing bright crimson, with faintly visible fountains of lava.
The woman who owned the car disappeared completely and the spectral glow of auras quivered where the children were sitting. Oho, it looked like the little girl had Other potential . . . yes, and the boy had a glimmer of something too . . .
Nadya waved to me. She was as quick and lively as in the real world.
I started looking deeper. The cliffs morphed into gray hills that were covered with streams of monochrome mud. Everything finally turned completely flat and muted, with only occasional weak glimmers of color, hinting at the blueness of the sky, the yellowness of the sun, and the blackness of the earth. Then the process reversed itself, the colors started showing through again, until they became really vivid.
Just looking at the sixth level of the Twilight was hard work. But now I could feel the constant stream of Power flowing into me from my daughter.
“No,” I said. “I don’t see anyone!”
Sixth Watch Page 27