Sixth Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  “I’ve arrived at a good moment,” Arina said in a quiet voice.

  We walked back to the same spot from which I had left, right beside the top table. Nadya was sitting in her place, having a friendly conversation about something with the witches beside her.

  “After you,” I said quietly to Arina. “I think it’s you they’ve been waiting for.”

  Arina snorted and walked up to the table. She reached her hand over Ernesta’s shoulder and took a quail off her plate.

  Silence fell in the hall. All the jaws that had been eagerly grinding up food stopped moving and all eyes were fixed on the Great Grandmother who had returned from oblivion. Only Nadya looked pleased to see me. I forced myself to smile at her in return.

  “Too spicy,” Arina said, breaking the silence. She crunched up the whole quail, including the bones, like a wolf. “I see you’re gorging yourselves, sisters.”

  “Arina!” Ernesta exclaimed, jumping up and hugging the other witch.

  “And hello to you, you old pest,” Arina replied good-naturedly. “So in a tight corner you remembered me, did you?”

  “Well, as you know, my dear, we don’t have any procedure for removing Great Grandmothers from their position if they disappear without a trace . . . or if they desert . . .” Ernesta purred.

  “You should try deserting to where I’ve been,” Arina retorted sarcastically. “So the Shoot hasn’t acknowledged another mistress then?”

  Arina reached out her hand, and the pot with the wooden phallus crept across the table toward her. She gave the Shoot a gentle slap and the dry wood seemed to explode, throwing up green sprigs that transformed it into a bush, which was instantly covered in white blossoms. Arina waited a few moments while the flowers dropped their petals and shrank, setting into strange fruits that looked like tiny white apples.

  Arina casually picked one, tossed it into her mouth, and chewed it.

  Ernesta lowered her head and squatted down in a deep, old-fashioned curtsy. Chairs scraped back as the witches got up and bowed to Arina, some curtsying or going down on their knees.

  “Enough, enough,” Arina said with a wave of her hand. “I have returned, sisters. No need for applause.”

  “She’s amusing,” the Tiger said quietly behind my back. “A good thing I didn’t kill her.”

  “And it’s lucky for us that we didn’t kill you,” I added.

  The Tiger smiled.

  Then he leaned his head to one side, listening to something.

  He frowned.

  “Daddy!” Nadya exclaimed, jumping up and nestling against me.

  Arina wiped her hand on her hip.

  “Ernesta, did you secure the Conclave?” she asked.

  “Arina!” the other witch replied indignantly.

  “Easy now, I’m not blaming you,” said Arina.

  The windows in the restaurant looked out onto a mountainside with the glittering threads of ski tracks running down it and Sno-Cats creeping across the surface on their caterpillar tracks. Suddenly the glass in one window started jangling and the witches sitting close to it all jumped up and moved away. The panes first bent inward and then bulged outward like sheets of polythene.

  “You have to leave,” said the Tiger. “Anton, do you hear me?”

  The glass gave a final rattle and then shattered into a spray of daggerlike splinters. Some of the pieces were motionless, suspended in midair; other pieces were thrown back and some simply disappeared. Every one of the witches who had come to the Conclave must have been wearing dozens of protective amulets.

  Cold air blew in through the broken window.

  And then the Two-in-One jumped up into the restaurant, soaring over the windowsill. He landed gently on the floor and froze.

  In the few hours that had passed, he had changed fundamentally: I realized what Arina had meant when she asked if the two Others were “together.”

  The former Light Magician Denis and the former Dark Magician Alexei had fused and they weren’t wearing any clothes. The bare sides of their bodies had grown together, as if they were Siamese twins, their pelvises and shoulders had turned outward to the sides, and they were now a single contorted creature with four legs and four arms. There was one leg at each side and two in the middle, which looked as if they were starting to fuse together—the genitals had receded, leaving barely a trace. There was a pair of arms above each side leg and the two heads were leaning inward, pressing against each other. It was an insane hybrid, worthy of the insane Dr. Moreau. A spider-man, but nothing like the hero from the American comics: This was a repulsive monster.

  “A real charmer,” Nadya said in a quiet voice.

  “Sir, this is a private function,” Arina said loudly. “Kindly leave the premises.”

  The Two-in-One laughed in two voices and flung out his arms, as if he was about to embrace the entire hall.

  “I like that!” Alexei’s head said.

  “How sweet!” Denis’s head added.

  “Stall him,” Arina told Ernesta, swinging around and taking Nadya and myself by the hand.

  It was very telling that even here, surrounded by the two hundred most powerful witches in the world, at a venue protected by countless spells and amulets, it never occurred to Arina to say “kill him.”

  We set off at a run toward the doors of the service area at the far end of the restaurant, leaving a crowd of frightened and infuriated witches between us and the Two-in-One.

  But I must admit that frightened as they were, they obeyed their Great Grandmother’s order. When I reached the doors I looked around, letting Nadya and Arina go on ahead, and saw a genuine battle beginning.

  The floor of the restaurant cracked open, sending parquet blocks flying in all directions. Prickly, flowing vines grew up through the hole, encircling the Two-in-One, before immediately crumbling to dust. Chairs and tables started advancing on the spiderlike monster, as if this were a children’s cartoon. I watched a table run (its legs even bent at the knees!) and crash into the Two-in-One’s belly, shattering into splinters. All the cutlery on the tables flew to one spot, meshed, and stood up as a skeletal figure that was two yards tall, with knives for fingers and a jaws made from lobster crackers. This metal monster fought the Two-in-One longer than anything else, lashing him with its knives and trying to thrust them into his body, until it was melted.

  The Two-in-One’s choice of spells wasn’t very fancy. Fire and ice, heat and cold. He only used pure Power a few times, to fling witches aside and deflect magical blows.

  “Anton!” the Tiger shouted, grabbing me by the shoulder and shoving me through the doorway. His face was contorted in fury—something I had never expected to see. “Wake up! They won’t stop him!”

  “What if we all try?”

  “You won’t stop him either!”

  “What about you?”

  The Tiger pushed me forward and I accepted the inevitable and ran. He didn’t want to fight. Neither did Arina, and she seemed to know even more than the Tiger did.

  We were in the kitchen, where pretty young witches were working away, evidently very proud of their assignment. Food was boiling and steaming in large pans, filling the air with delicious aromas, timers were beeping, and sliced meat and diced vegetables were lying on chopping boards.

  “Was sollen wir jetzt tun? Was sollen wir jetzt bloß tun?” asked a young witch, grabbing me by the shoulder. She was genuinely young, not concealing her real appearance. And she was curious; she wanted to know what was going on, didn’t want to hide from the magical bloodbath.

  “Flieht!” I shouted. “Run!”

  “Aber wir können Ihnen helfen!” the young witch suggested bravely, spreading out her hands. Blue sparks started flickering between her fingers. A great help she would be . . .

  “Flieht!” I barked, looking around for Arina and Nadya. They were already at the far end of the kitchen. I noticed a boy about three years old sitting on a table. He was bawling and rubbing his eyes with his little fists. What I was th
inking must have shown in my face, because the young witch grabbed the boy and hugged him tightly.

  “Das ist mein Sohn!” she shouted. “Mein Sohn—nicht das, was Sie denken!”

  She wasn’t lying, it really was her son and not a snack for the witches.

  “Dann solltest du erst recht von hier verschwinden, du Närrin! Bring dich in Sicherheit!” I shouted and ran on. The Tiger was covering our retreat, moving through the chaos and uproar with his typical grace.

  I don’t know if the little witch took my advice, or if a sense of duty to her “sisters” outweighed her fear for her son and she joined the battle against the Two-in-One.

  I didn’t look back.

  We ran out of the kitchen into a space that was cool and airy. Some kind of utility room or pantry . . . Arina was already fiddling with the lock on the tall metal doors. First she tried to open it, then she simply smashed it off with a blow of her hand (I spotted a tiny, economical discharge of Power). The doors swung open and she dashed out into the night and the swirling snow. Nadya paused for a moment, waiting for me, and then we all ran out after Arina. I slammed the door shut and sealed it with the Absolute Lock.

  “This is bad,” the Tiger gasped behind me. “Very bad . . . The Twilight is closed off.”

  “Open it, you are the Twilight!” I told him.

  “I can’t,” the Tiger answered, “He’s the Twilight now. I don’t have the right!”

  We were standing on a snowy road at the foot of a shallow slope. A Sno-Cat with blinking blue lights was slowly creeping up the slope, making mournful sounds. I didn’t feel the cold at all.

  “We’ll have to fight,” I said. “We’ll have to—”

  The Absolute Lock can’t be removed, it just dissipates spontaneously after a while. So the Two-in-One simply smashed the door to tatters. For a moment the metal was covered by a bluish crust of ice, and then it shattered like glass. Had he cooled it all the way down to absolute zero, then?

  The Two-in-One ran out after us, and I realized that his duel with the witches had taken a serious toll: One of his central legs had been torn off at the knee and black liquid was spurting out of the stump. But that didn’t seem to bother him. And neither did the massive kitchen knife thrust into Denis’s eye right up to the handle, or the huge orange tomcat clinging to Alexei’s neck and methodically scraping the former Black Magician’s face with its claws.

  “You’ve come too soon, Two-in-One!” I shouted. “This is only the third time!”

  Denis’s remaining eye glared at me.

  “This one counts double,” the Two-in-One replied.

  The monster’s four arms reached out toward us and I mentally activated my Shields, moving back and protecting Nadya and Arina with my own body.

  “Dad!” Nadya shouted, and I felt a stream of Power flowing from her to me. I glanced around briefly at my daughter and saw that Arina was no longer there beside her. The old witch had gone. She had abandoned us!

  “Stop!” said the Tiger, stepping between me and the Two-in-One. “You’re breaking the rules here. The time hasn’t come yet! The prophecy said three victims the fourth time, on the fifth day!”

  “Out of my way, you brat,” said the Two-in-One, striking the Tiger with a boiling jet of fire from his right hands and a swirling stream of blue-black smoke from his left hands. “I don’t give a rotten damn for your prophecies!”

  The Tiger shook himself and crimson flames and blue chunks of ice fell off him onto the ground. The asphalt under his feet started boiling and swelled up into humps. The snow and ice evaporated into clouds of heavy, bluish mist.

  “No one has any right to violate prophecies!” the Tiger exclaimed almost joyfully.

  He stepped forward, tugging his feet out of the molten asphalt. I could feel the heat, even behind the Shields I had put up.

  “And now I have the right to act,” the Tiger said, moving toward the Two-in-One.

  The Two-in-One dashed at him and the two creatures of the Twilight merged into a single, tangled knot.

  They rolled across the ground, embroiled in an ordinary, straightforward fight, not a battle of magic. But perhaps sorcery was involved after all. When the embodiments of two laws of nature—two functions that have acquired human form—fight each other, it has to be magic, even if the battle is fought with teeth and nails, fangs and talons.

  The Two-in-One didn’t change; he fought in his “human spider” form. But the Tiger’s shape shifted. Sometimes I could see flashes of paws and ferociously bared teeth. And sometimes I saw bloodied hands and a human face with an equally ferocious grin.

  It all seemed to be happening at the same time, as if he were man and beast simultaneously.

  The orange tomcat came flying out of the tangle with its legs splayed and dashed across the snow toward the doors of the restaurant, meowing wildly.

  I started backing away toward Nadya. There was nothing I could do to help the Tiger. If I struck any kind of blow I risked hitting our only protector.

  “Open a portal!” I shouted to my daughter.

  “I can’t! The Twilight’s boiling!” she exclaimed despairingly. “Everything’s swirling about . . .”

  I could also sense that something was wrong with the Twilight, without having to glance into it. The ground under my feet started shuddering. Ghostly purple lights appeared on the mountaintops. A low, intense humming sound filled the air.

  The Twilight was fighting with itself. Its two incarnations were grappling in mortal combat: the Two-in-One, the ancient destroyer of civilizations, and the Tiger, their ancient protector. Both immensely powerful. Both remorseless.

  But the Tiger had only one indisputable right—to ensure that we didn’t die today. To protect the prophecy that had been proclaimed.

  “Let’s run for it, Nadya,” I said. “Come on . . . this wrestling is bound to end badly.”

  “Dad, we won’t get away,” my daughter said, taking hold of my hand. And then she said something I had never heard her say, even when she was a child: “Dad, I’m afraid . . .”

  There was a blinding flash, a bright streak of fire and ice, as if something had exploded deep in the tangle of fighting bodies. They fell apart, with the Two-in-One flying off in one direction and the Tiger in the other.

  But the Two-in-One got up, and the Tiger just lay there.

  The Two-in-One looked at me with his only remaining eye—one of Denis’s. The knife was still protruding from the eye socket beside it. Alexei’s face had been reduced to bloody mush and his head was spinning about wildly.

  “You’re all—” wheezed the Two-in-One.

  At that very moment a Sno-Cat came rumbling across the road on its caterpillar tracks. Its blinking lights and beepers had been switched off and its scoop was lowered.

  The vehicle crashed into the Two-in-One, toppling him over and crushing him. It then started spinning around on the spot, pulping the human flesh with its tracks. The Two-in-One howled in two voices and fell silent.

  Nadya and I just stood there, dumbstruck.

  The Sno-Cat came to a halt and its engine cut out. The door of the cabin opened and Arina clambered out and jumped down onto the snow.

  “I thought you’d run away,” I said.

  “You can’t run away from destiny, silly,” Arina replied.

  I walked up to the Sno-Cat and looked at a hand protruding from under a caterpillar track. The hand twitched, as if it could sense my gaze, and it grabbed at the frozen ground. The vehicle jerked upward and the maimed, half-crushed Two-in-One started creeping out from under a machine that weighed tons.

  “You never know when to stop, you brute,” said Arina, leaning down over the Two-in-One, who had already crept halfway out. She was holding the Shoot—no longer a flowering bush, but a wooden phallus again. Only now, without its pot, the Shoot looked less obscene, at least from one side—and from that side it looked like a wooden dagger.

  Arina raised it over her head and swung it down hard and fast, piercing the bo
dy of the Two-in-One. The mutilated monster suddenly disappeared without a trace and the dagger, stuck in the ground, darkened as it clad itself in bark and grew a single, thin sprout.

  “You killed him!” I said. “You killed him!”

  “The Two-in-One’s not that easy to kill,” Arina said regretfully. “I stopped him for a while.”

  “And where is he?”

  “He withdrew into the Twilight,” said Arina. “To lick his wounds.”

  “Dad!” Nadya shrieked.

  I went dashing to my daughter. She was kneeling beside the Tiger, who was stirring feebly, trying to sit up. I leaned down and held out my hand to help him to his feet.

  “How does it look?” the Tiger asked, turning toward me.

  It looked appalling—half of the Tiger’s head was missing. It had been sliced off neatly from the top down to one ear, leaving a surface with a smooth, glassy crust. Or perhaps the wound was filled with glass.

  “I’d say you’re dead.”

  “What a good thing I’m not human,” said the Tiger, thrusting his hand into the gap for a moment. Then he shrugged and asked: “Have you got any cigarettes?”

  “Won’t that be bad for you?” I asked, trying not to look at the fearsome wound. I rummaged in my pockets—I’d put those cigarettes that the Tiger gave me in one of them . . .

  “Nothing’s bad for me any longer,” the Tiger replied calmly. “I’ve only got two minutes left to live.”

  “And what then?” asked Nadya, bewildered.

  “Then I’ll withdraw into the Twilight, little girl,” said the Tiger. “I broke the rules.”

  “No you didn’t!” I said. “You were protecting the prophecy! Performing your own function!”

  “That’s splitting hairs,” the Tiger said. Taking the pack from me, he pulled out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and it lit up. “It worked though,” he said. “Unfortunately, midnight arrived while we were fighting. After that I didn’t have any right to stop the Two-in-One from killing you.”

  “But you stopped him anyway!” Nadya exclaimed.