“And in between visits?” Nadya asked.
“I didn’t have any ‘in between.’” The Tiger laughed. “And I stayed here. I’ve been thinking things over. And I realized I don’t like the Two-in-One.”
“Why not?”
“First, because if he kills you, I’ll have to go back,” the Tiger said irritably. “And I happen to be waiting for the next Star Wars to be released.”
“If only Lucas could hear that,” Nadya exclaimed in delight.
“Second, I don’t like the very little that I do know about the Two-in-One,” the Tiger went on. “If he thinks that the Covenant of the Twilight has been violated, then he has no other option but to exterminate all the Others. And the disappearance of the Others will result in the death of all life on the planet.”
“Why?” I asked.
The Tiger shrugged.
“I only know the result. And I don’t like it. Perhaps the Two-in-One doesn’t care if he’s left on a lifeless planet. Perhaps the Twilight doesn’t care . . . or it isn’t aware of what’s happening. But I’m against it.”
“What a stroke of luck for us that you’ve been humanized.” I chuckled. “Tell me, can you stop him?”
“The ancient god of Light and Darkness? The vampire god? Who has appeared in the world to stage the apocalypse?” The Tiger shook his head. “No chance.”
“But he walked away today!”
“Perhaps because I appeared so unexpectedly,” the Tiger suggested. “Or perhaps because the prophecy says ‘three victims the fourth time.’ How many times has he tried to kill you so far?”
“Once,” I replied gloomily.
“Now it’s twice. I’m pretty sure that when he attacks the third time, he’ll back off again. Perhaps he’ll justify his retreat to himself by some weighty considerations of logic, but the real reason is different. Whether he’s knows it or not, the Two-in-One is following the prophecy. The first and second times he withdrew when a new opponent appeared. He’ll find a reason to withdraw one more time . . .”
“And the fourth time he’ll kill us.”
“If you don’t kill him,” the Tiger said with a nod. “Nadezhda Antonovna is an Absolute Enchantress. Her Power is unlimited. But as you know perfectly well, skill is required to use Power properly. So if there’s a duel, my money would be on the Two-in-One.”
“But what about the Sixth Watch?”
The Tiger thought about that.
“Would it be stronger than the Two-in-One?” I asked.
“The Sixth Watch would be the right opponent,” the Tiger said eventually. “Thousands of years ago, six Others concluded some kind of agreement with the Twilight in the person of the Two-in-One. Now the agreement has been violated, and the Two-in-One has been incarnated to punish all the Others as renegades. But if the Sixth Watch is resurrected, a dialogue will probably be possible. The Treaty could be renewed, mistakes could be put right, and so on.”
“But you don’t know what the Treaty was, what the mistakes were, what the Sixth Watch was?”
“I told you, no!” the Tiger replied peevishly. “I’m on your side. I’m for the Others and the people, because I like being an Other-person. And I’m ready to help, but don’t expect answers to any of your questions. I don’t have them.”
“But can you guess at any?” Svetlana asked. “After all, you’re closest of all to the Twilight.”
The Tiger laughed.
“Yes, I can guess . . . the Sixth Watch wasn’t forgotten immediately, right? You found out about the occasion when it discussed collaboration with the human Inquisition. Why?”
“Why did it reject the idea?” I said.
“No, not that! Why did it discuss the question at all? Why did it even exist, if the Two-in-One hadn’t appeared for hundreds or thousands of years?” the Tiger replied.
“The Sixth Watch was the most ancient of all our Night and Day Watches,” I said morosely. “At the dawn of time the Two-in-One appeared to the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals. And they decided something. Let’s assume they discussed things without any formal structure, at the shaman level . . . Some kind of group got together and they decided something. And then the Two-in-One showed up again a lot later, when he had some grievances to settle. Civilization already existed, with its ancient cities . . .”
“Ur, Shang, Egypt, Atlantis,” the Tiger said without a trace of irony.
“Our Watches didn’t exist yet,” I said, thinking out loud. “But some kind of Sixth Watch was chosen for the meeting with him. Were they the same Others who gathered at the dawn of time? Or their successors? And why Sixth?”
“More likely it was called The Watch of Six,” the Tiger suggested. “Or The Six Watchmen. Something like that.”
“What you could call ‘the six supervisors’ in Russian thieves’ jargon,” Svetlana said wryly.
“You could put it like that,” I said, watching as the Tiger pensively blew smoke out of his mouth. I gave in and took a cigarette from the pack. As I lit it I caressed it with my finger.
“You poser,” Svetlana said derisively.
“You could put it like that,” I repeated, taking a drag.
The cigarette really did taste superb—if you can say that about poison.
“The question is, why did the Sixth Watch disappear?” Nadya said. “At the beginning, the Two-in-One came to the vampires and shape-shifters. There weren’t any specialized differentiations yet. But by the time he made his second visit, there were—and they appeared as six forces united in the Sixth Watch. But why did it exist for centuries before and after the Two-in-One’s second coming, and then disappear?”
“It didn’t just disappear, the very memory of it was lost,” Svetlana added.
I shrugged, and the Tiger repeated my gesture. “I don’t know,” he said, “but that’s what I would advise you to think about: What was the Sixth Watch needed for, and why did it disappear? Perhaps then you can work out how to defeat the Two-in-One. And who the members of the Watch are.”
He got up, and I realized our conversation was over.
“Are you tracking us?” I asked.
The Tiger shook his head.
“But you appeared at just the right moment . . .”
“I appeared when I sensed someone was using Power—you were using it, and so was the Two-in-One. I realized you were dueling, and so I came.”
“It’s a good thing you used the Press when you did, Dad,” said Nadya. “Bye-bye, Tiger!”
“Bye-bye, Absolute Little Girl,” the Tiger said absolutely seriously. “I hope everything will be all right. Although there isn’t much chance of that.”
I was expecting the Tiger simply to disappear. But first he took some money out of his pocket and put two thousand-ruble notes on the table. Then he walked out through the door of the bathroom.
“He’s become completely humanized,” I said in amazement. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Nadya, open a portal to the Watch office,” Svetlana said. “I realize that’s the place where you couldn’t defend yourself against the Tiger. But it’s still safer.”
“Maybe Gesar has some kind of refuge in mind?” I sighed, taking a drag on my cigarette.
A young waitress walked up to our table. I thought she had come to take the money, but she stopped beside us and glared at me indignantly.
“Is something wrong?” I asked
“Well, what do you think?” the girl asked. “You’re smoking! Shall I call the police and get them to charge you?”
“Yes . . . er . . .” I said in embarrassment, stubbing out the cigarette in the coffee that was left in my cup and flapping my hand in the air. “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”
“Don’t be angry with my dad,” said Nadya. “He was lost in thought. He’s just got some bad news.”
“Has something happened?” the waitress asked suspiciously, but her expression softened as she watched me taking money out of my pocket.
“Yes,” said Nadya. “We’re all
going to die.”
“Well, that is news. What a comedian.” The waitress snorted, raking up the money.
One day, in a casual conversation, Olga had told me that she almost became a witch. Not in the metaphorical sense, like “that woman is a witch,” and not even in the pseudoscientific sense that any female Other is inclined to use the magical techniques of witchcraft. But in the absolutely literal sense. There was a time when if things had gone differently, Olga would have started boiling up potions in a cauldron, charging amulets with magic, hexing people, and making “medicinal ointments” to drive virgins wild.
But everything turned out differently and Olga became a Light Other.
Things are actually more complicated than that. Yes, there are certain essential signs of a witch—the use of artifacts and vegetable or animal extracts, the frequent use of magic that is only accessible to women (there’s nothing sexist in this, it’s just that male physiology doesn’t allow you to work certain spells, like the Bottomless Pit or brew the potion Mummy’s Rat-a-Tat, which includes three drops of breast milk).
In fact, witches often use physiological fluids—which is one reason they’re not liked. In this respect they’re a bit like vampires and werewolves, with their craving for blood and flesh. However, despite all the rumors, these “virgins’ tears” and “drops of baby’s blood” are usually gathered without whipping innocent young maidens or chopping children into pieces. But there are some straightforward sadists among witches too, and if a young girl hears a witch say, “I want your tears,” she’ll probably be too frightened to respond rationally.
That was why people used to burn witches, whenever they could catch them. And at one point the Inquisition got so annoyed about it all that the Conclave took a real hammering. And after that the witches, who had been quite powerful and independent, started keeping a lower profile.
But I had no doubt that witches were among the very first Others. Originally they were probably vampires who had learned to do a lot with a little and extract Power from a few drops of blood, instead of quarts of it.
But there is another far more interesting question. Did the witches start storing Power in beads, rings, and earrings because they already wore them, or did they start wearing jewelry so they had a place to store Power? I was inclined to believe the latter. Which, by the way, would explain the universal female passion for jewelry—human women wore it to disguise themselves as Others, as witches. In less enlightened times a woman could find it useful to be regarded as a witch.
In fact, even nowadays it can be pretty handy . . .
“How are you?” I asked Nadya.
“Fine, Dad,” my daughter answered.
That’s the only answer she’s ever given me in the last couple of years: “Fine,” “Okay,” “Cool.” It’s her awkward age, I suppose. At ten she used to ask me about everything, and when she was twelve I could still ask her about absolutely anything.
“An unusual spot for a witches’ Sabbath, isn’t it?” I asked.
My daughter shrugged.
“Why do you say that? I think it’s a very good spot. They can’t keep on meeting in Kiev all the time, up on Bald Hill, can they?”
“There’s the Brocken in Germany too,” I reminded her.
“Everywhere has its own Bald Hill,” Nadya said with a shrug. “In Moscow the witches meet on the Sparrow Hills . . . Try to catch me!”
She pushed off with her ski poles and glided down the slope.
We were standing on the crest of a hill. One side of the slope was wild and unkempt, with a scattering of boulders. In some places the wind had blown away the snow to expose the dark underlying rock, and in others it had piled up huge snowdrifts.
On the other side the slope had been cleared and it was covered with a smooth layer of snow. There were snow cannons, long lines of ski-lift pylons, and the diminutive figures of skiers and snowboarders slithering down the slope in their bright-colored outfits. The sun was sinking in the west and the ski lifts were only carrying people down now. It gets dark quickly up in the mountains, and in half an hour all these tourists would be taking showers and getting changed, and an hour or so after that they’d be eating dinner and drinking beer.
It was a small ski resort on the border between Austria and Italy, set in the narrow valley of a mountain pass, with a host of hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants, huddled along the road that ran through the valley. There were ski lifts everywhere, on the west and east sides of the valley. This place probably lived a different life in the summer, based on ecological tourism, with long hikes along the slopes to collect edelweiss flowers and admire the cows.
But the resort only really came alive in the winter.
And when the witches held a convention here.
I had been planning to go to the meeting alone, as Gesar had told me to. But at the very last moment, when Nadya and Svetlana had already been allocated a room on one of the basement levels of the Night Watch building, the plans were changed. Zabulon showed up, saying that he had been contacted by one of the senior witches in the Conclave, and the witches “wanted Gorodetsky to bring his daughter with him.” Half an hour was spent arguing about security, until the Inquisition guaranteed Nadya’s safety (although, to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure that the entire might of the Inquisition, including all its spells of prohibition and the artifacts in its special repositories, would be capable of destroying the Two-in-One). Then it took another half hour for Nadya and me to persuade Svetlana. She responded to the suggestion of letting Nadya accompany me to the Conclave with the same suspicion she had shown fifteen years earlier, when I offered to feed Nadya from the bottle. Women just don’t believe that men know how to take care of children.
But the invitation from the Conclave was very specific and it couldn’t be interpreted in any other way. Anton Gorodetsky and his daughter, Nadezhda. No more, no less.
In the end there wasn’t enough time to get to Austria by using any human form of transport. And the area immediately surrounding the hotel where the witches had gathered for their Conclave had been securely closed against magical portals. I had never seen Gesar and Zabulon so annoyed and embarrassed as when I asked them to open a portal directly into the hotel.
They couldn’t do it.
And neither could the Inquisition.
The witches had used some special spells and artifacts of their own, making it impossible to travel directly to their Sabbath. Our journey acquired the surreal air of a James Bond adventure as ski suits and equipment were brought for Nadya and me.
We had been on skiing trips before, and this was a simple piste, only “light-red” in the local classification, well tended, and clearly marked. Even so, I took precautions on the descent, using magic to calculate the probabilities as I followed Nadya down. I was slightly alarmed to realize that my body had begun forgetting its downhill-skiing skills. There was one spot where I would have gone tumbling head over heels, another where a wild young snowboarder would have cut in on my slow, clumsy advance and knocked me over, and a third spot where I would have become overconfident as I started remembering a thing or two, increased my speed, and gone rolling down the slope again . . .
So I followed Nadya down without hurrying, like a novice, slowing myself by doing a snowplow, meandering across the slope, and gradually piecing back together what I had forgotten. I thought what a shame it was that we hadn’t been to the mountains for a couple of years. It was really great up here . . . and how wonderful it was when little Nadya used to ski down behind me, looking so funny and concentrating so hard . . .
We reached the bottom of the slope right beside the hotel where the Conclave was taking place. I hadn’t taken a close look until then, or maybe the hotel had been protected with some kind of witches’ spell of darkness, but down here the display of auras was dazzling.
Others.
Mostly Dark Ones.
Witches.
The hotel was called Winter Hexerei, a name with an old-fashioned
charm and air of menace about it. The Dark Ones are fond of provocative, revealing little jokes like that—vampires tell funny stories about blood, teeth, and sucking; shape-shifters make wisecracks about wolves, fur, and midnight. And witches just adore talking about sorcery.
The poster at the entrance was equally impish and provocative.
“Welcome to the delegates of the DCLXV traditional convention of feminist gerontologists, cosmetologists, botanists, and personal relationship consultants.”
It was a bit longwinded, of course, especially in the German version, but it conveyed rather well the essence of what witches do. I would have added zoologists too—lots of witches’ spells use substances of animal origin. But then that would have sounded really ponderous.
“How did I do?” Nadya asked as she slowed to a halt.
“Really good,” I said sincerely, stopping beside her. “Did you check the probabilities through the Twilight?”
Nadya hesitated for a second before she confessed.
“Well . . . just a bit. I got frightened halfway down and took a look. It was a good job I did, if I hadn’t slowed down, I’d have fallen. Are we going in here?”
I nodded. We were standing beside the hotel entrance, with a leisurely stream of people flowing past us. Most of them were witches, most of them were old and most of them were wearing ski suits and holding skis.
“Where shall we put the skis?” Nadya asked as she took hers off.
I pointed to a rack beside the restaurant’s open-air patio. During the day people left their skis there while they ate, but now, with night coming on and the air turning colder, the patio was empty except for a few people smoking by the door. The sky had turned dark very early and lights were coming on all over the valley—beside the hotels, along the road, on the ski trails.
“Let’s dump them here,” I said. “It would be rather absurd to lug them in with us, wouldn’t it?”
“They’re good skis,” Nadya said. But she obediently put her pair beside mine. “It was so fantastic to go skiing again . . .”
“When this crisis is all over, we’ll take a trip into the mountains,” I said. “I promise.”
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