“That’s right,” the Tiger said with a nod. “Let’s just say I got carried away.”
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked. “Can we help? You’re not a human being . . .”
“That’s just the problem. The Twilight has cut me off. Turned off the Power, if you like.”
The Tiger blew out a jet of smoke and looked up at the clear night sky. “You’re lucky. You have the stars. Someday human beings will stop killing each other with the Two-in-One’s help and reach the stars.”
“I can give you Power!” Nadya shouted. “I’m an Absolute Other! How much do you need, Tiger?”
The Tiger looked at my daughter and I thought I sensed a rapid, unspoken dialogue between them. Nadya lowered her eyes.
“Don’t be sad,” said the Tiger. “I told you, I’m not human at all. I won’t even die like you do. Don’t be sad. You have to cope with him. And you have Arina now; she seems to know what to do.”
“Tiger,” I said. The final seconds of his life were draining away, but I had to ask this. “Remember what you called me at the Sarcophagus? You were wrong. I’m a Light One.”
“I didn’t say you were a Dark One.” The Tiger laughed. “Ask Zabulon. He’ll explain.”
The Tiger stretched, dropped his cigarette, and ground it out thoroughly with his foot. He raised his head and looked up at the sky again with a smile.
Then he sank down and sat on the ground.
Of course he wasn’t human, but he died like a man, in every sense of the word. Unlike the Two-in-One, his body remained lying there. The glassy flesh darkened and started bleeding.
I hugged Nadya and held her close, then looked at Arina, who had come over to us.
“Take out the Minoan Sphere,” I told her.
“Where to?” the witch asked in a quiet voice.
“The Day Watch office. To Zabulon.”
Arina froze with the Sphere in her hands.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. And don’t try to run away, you’ll be ashamed for the rest of your life.”
“As if there was much of that life left . . .” Arina muttered.
Oh, how they gaped at her!
Our two Great Higher Ones: Gesar and Zabulon. The Son of Tibet and the Son of Judea. The Light One and the Dark One.
She sat there modestly, opposite them, wearing a business suit that looked surprisingly appropriate in Zabulon’s office. The witch Arina: the head of the Conclave of Witches.
Zabulon was still in his incredibly maniacal mood. It wasn’t obvious at first glance, but then he kissed Arina ceremoniously on the hand and complimented her in French.
“Comme vous êtes charmante!”
“Ah, you old rogue,” Arina replied flirtatiously.
Gesar said nothing, but sat there glaring at the witch, while she studiously ignored him.
Olga sat in the corner of the office, breathing smoke from her cigarette into an expensive Japanese air purifier and watching Gesar intently. Arina cast a fleeting glance at her before speaking again.
“Stop that now, Boris. I forgave you a long time ago.”
Gesar turned as red as if he was about to have an apoplectic fit, but still didn’t say anything.
Svetlana simply sat at one side with her arms around Nadya. She hadn’t asked any questions when we appeared in Zabulon’s office; she’d just taken her daughter and hugged her.
Maybe she already knew everything anyway. Maybe they’d been tracking us and had seen it all.
I couldn’t care less if they had.
“I promised Arina that she wouldn’t be harmed, that her freedom would not be restricted, and that she would not be forced to do anything she found offensive,” I said. “She has promised to tell us everything she knows about the Two-in-One and the Sixth Watch.”
“We’ve discovered a thing or two as well,” Gesar said reluctantly. “A thing or two . . . Go on, Arina.”
“The Two-in-One is the purger of human civilization,” said Arina. “To be more precise, when the human race violates the age-old balance between good and evil, the Twilight starts suffering. So when the equilibrium is disrupted, the Twilight tries to restore it. And since the Twilight reflects the moral and ethical condition of humankind, it is biased toward evil and the methods it uses are not the kindest. It sends the Two-in-One, who purges.”
“How?” Gesar asked.
“In the simplest way possible, from the Twilight’s point of view. The Two-in-One kills the Others. Either all of them or at least the overwhelming majority—I don’t think he really needs to drag the final vampire out of his coffin or the final shape-shifter out of his burrow. In normal circumstances, we Others maintain the balance of Power; we use up the excess. Which means that people aren’t able to make use of magic, which spares them the temptation of dangerous toys.”
“If we die, then the people will kill each other,” Gesar said pensively.
“Yes. The vestiges of civilization that remain are very simple, but strangely enough the balance between good and evil is restored.”
“What’s so strange about that?” Zabulon exclaimed gleefully. “It’s not evil to smack your neighbor over the head with a club, make him work in your field, and make his wife warm your bed. That’s normal, natural behavior. Basic practicality. Animals are also beyond good and evil—when a wolf kills a hare, it doesn’t feel any hatred. Evil is when you convince your neighbor that he ought to work in your field, give his wife to you, and sing your praises at the same time.”
“Thank you, we get the idea,” Gesar told him in an icy voice.
“The Two-in-One was the first emanation of the Twilight, the first agent of its will,” Arina continued. “He concluded the very first, most ancient covenant between the Twilight and the Others. We Others maintain the equilibrium between good and evil, allowing the Twilight to lead a calm and comfortable existence. But if evil becomes dominant, the Two-in-One comes and makes us pay the bill. And now that time has arrived.”
“And what if good becomes dominant?” Nadya asked quietly.
“Unfortunately, my girl, that has never happened,” Arina replied. I thought I caught a note of genuine compassion in her voice. “At least, it has never happened on a global scale. Although we have tried to make it happen, of course. Throughout history, new religions have been invented, new ethical principles, new variations on the social contract . . .”
“Communism was a stupid idea though,” said Zabulon, keeping his voice low to avoid an unnecessary argument.
“Are you sure the time is here?” Gesar asked Arina, ignoring Zabulon. “But why am I asking? He wouldn’t have appeared otherwise . . . Why do you know about this? Why don’t we know? Why is there nothing in the archives of the Inquisition? Who cleaned out every last mention of the Sixth Watch and the Two-in-One?”
“Do you really not understand, Gesar?” Arina asked. “Honestly and truly?”
Olga stubbed out her cigarette with an abrupt movement and got up.
“We cleaned it all out. Isn’t that right, witch?”
“Of course,” said Arina. “It was a secret, naturally, but there was the Watch of Six, which kept the secret, and there were documents in the archives. And the Higher Ones knew, including you and Zabulon.”
“I have already reached that conclusion by logical deduction!” Zabulon added. “If there is information that I am obliged to know, but I don’t know it, then the only possible explanation is that I made myself forget it. I couldn’t have been influenced from the outside. Discard the impossible and the improbable must be true.”
“Thank you, we appreciate your opinion,” said Gesar. “When did this happen? Who was involved?”
“The full membership of the Sixth Watch. And all the Higher Others knew.”
“Why was it done?” Gesar asked.
“It was 1914,” Arina stated simply. “A hundred years ago. You began an experiment, with a world war and a revolution in Russia. We all know that the scientist influences the results of the
experiment, if he knows basically what is happening. You wanted to turn humankind toward the good and you were afraid that your knowledge of the Two-in-One would prevent you from doing what . . . what was necessary.”
“Who is ‘you’?” Gesar asked indignantly. “Is that me? Or Zabulon?”
“You and Zabulon, among others. Essentially all the Great Ones were involved, but it was you and Zabulon who insisted on holding the experiment in Russia. And at the very last moment, by the way! France was the favorite, with Germany and Great Britain hot on its heels. The United States was excluded from the start—their previous experiment with the Civil War was considered a failure. But you insisted that Russia must be the guinea pig.”
“Me and my patriotism,” Gesar grunted.
“Well, you could call it that,” Arina replied sarcastically. “What you actually said was: ‘It’s a savage country, it won’t be any great loss.’”
Zabulon laughed and slapped his hands down on the desk.
“That’s excellent, Gesar! That’s wonderful. How very like a Light One.”
“And you . . .” Arina began.
“Stop! I don’t wish to know!” Zabulon cried. “It has no bearing on the business at hand, and I don’t want to know.”
“Whatever you say,” Arina agreed amiably. “We purged everything. All the data in the archives. All the records in the chronicles. Nothing was left but the scraps of vampire legends and references in secondary documents that everyone had forgotten about. And then we wiped our own memories clean. We took a very thorough approach.”
“But why can you remember it?” Gesar asked.
“I took a different view from the very start,” she said. “I sensed that neither of the experiments would turn out well. Neither the world war nor the revolution. You can’t coerce human nature like that. And you can’t make good out of evil. No one can manage that.”
“But you remember!” Gesar persisted.
“I kept my memory in a separate place.” Arina laughed. “We witches have an artifact that stores the memories of all the Great Grandmothers. I didn’t even have to do anything special, so you didn’t spot any cunning on my part. The moment I picked up that artifact, I remembered . . . And I realized what we had done. But it was too late. All I could do was watch what was happening to Russia. Keep an eye on you idiots. And follow instructions . . . Until I got too sick of it all.”
Gesar and Zabulon sat there looking miserable and wretched. The grin of maniacal glee had even disappeared from Zabulon’s face.
And I must say I really enjoyed that.
“So you know everything, then?” Olga asked in a businesslike tone. “Who the members of the Sixth Watch are and how to defeat the Two-in-One? There’s no point in going over old grudges now.”
“No, there isn’t,” Arina concurred. “Yes, I know. That’s why I was so distraught. I could see the way everything was going. I was searching for a solution. A way to save myself and all of us, to save the country and the entire human race. But I didn’t find it . . . Didn’t you ever even wonder why in Russia the subtle world suddenly started warping and cracking? An Inferno breaks through, an Absolute Enchantress is born, the Fuaran is found, the Tiger appears . . . What do you make of all that? Things come apart when they’re botched.”
“Well,” said Gesar, looking at me and Svetlana, then averting his gaze. “The Absolute Enchantress was my initiative.”
“Ours,” Zabulon said unexpectedly, and I looked at him in amazement.
“Ours,” Gesar agreed. “We saw that the Twilight was unsettled. Certain fragments of knowledge kept resurfacing . . .”
“So we carried out certain work,” said Zabulon. “To prepare for the appearance of an Absolute Enchantress. As a weapon against the Twilight.”
“There was something the Tiger told me before he died,” I said, staring at Zabulon. “He said I was ‘begotten of the Darkness.’ And he told me you would explain what that meant.”
“Yes, I can explain that,” Zabulon said glibly.
“Please don’t,” Gesar said to him. “Let’s get on with business.”
“This has to do with our business,” I said. “Tell me.”
“You could say it’s all a matter of genetics,” Zabulon began. “Or even—”
“Don’t,” said Gesar, raising his voice.
“Or even eugenics,” Zabulon continued. “The abilities of an Other are not necessarily inherited by offspring, but there is a definite correlation, which is easiest to calculate after several generations. We don’t study the genes, but we calculate the lines of probability.”
Gesar didn’t protest anymore. He just sat there, looking at me.
“The Absolute Enchantress had to be born from two lines,” said Zabulon, keeping his eyes fixed on me. “One of them had to be Light—and that was quite easy, there was a very wide choice. The other line had to be Dark, and it had to pass through me. That was mandatory.”
I swallowed the lump that had risen in my throat.
“But I’m a Light One,” I said.
“Boris Ignatievich was convinced that a Light One and Dark One wouldn’t be able to get on together,” said Zabulon. “So he waited for the right moment and initiated you in a Light state of mind. I was very offended by that for a long time, and to be honest, I was angry with you too, although it wasn’t your fault in any way.”
“My father was an ordinary human being,” I said firmly. “A normal, ordinary human being!”
“Yes,” Zabulon agreed readily. “It’s an unfortunate fact that children rarely inherit the abilities of Others; they usually skip a generation. Gesar and Olga actually had a candidate of their own, but they managed to lose the boy somehow and only found him again when it was too late. And my last four granddaughters actually have no Other abilities whatsoever. But things went a bit better with my three grandsons—and you were the lucky one.”
“Dad is your grandson?” Nadya asked in the silence that had fallen.
Zabulon gave an embarrassed shrug.
“So that makes me your great-granddaughter?” Nadya went on.
“And what about me? Gesar, who are you to me?” Svetlana exclaimed.
She jumped to her feet and dashed across to Gesar, who pulled back, raising his hands in a gesture of appeasement.
“Who are you to me? My father? My grandfather? What sort of Bollywood epic is this? Maybe I should start dancing and break into a song about the long-lost daughter who has been found?”
“You’re not related to me,” Gesar said in a loud, emphatic voice. “There were Light Ones in your family line, you had the potential of a Great Enchantress, and that was enough! Yes, we exploited you, we put you in contact with . . . suitable candidates. And we wrote Nadezhda’s birth into your destiny! But that’s all. I’m not your relative!”
“What a pleasure it is to hear that!” Svetlana exclaimed, and slapped Gesar hard on the cheek.
The Great Light One put his hand to his face and gaped at her in confusion.
“I’ve been dreaming about doing that for a long time,” Svetlana declared joyfully.
“Give him another for me,” I said.
“Gladly!” said Svetlana, and she did. Then she turned to Nadya and said. “That’s all, we’re leaving.”
“It will mean the end of the world, little girl,” said Arina.
“I couldn’t give a damn,” Svetlana replied. “Don’t order me around, you old witch. Or are you my mother, or granny, or great granny?”
“Now leave me out of that!” Arina exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “All we women are sisters! And no matter what kind of mess the men might make, we have to answer for life, don’t we? And you’re a doctor, you swore the Hippocratic oath.”
“The Soviet doctor’s oath,” Svetlana replied morosely, but she sat down again beside Nadya and pulled her daughter close.
“Everyone calm down,” Arina continued in a conciliatory tone. “This is no reason for a quarrel. As if you didn’t know, Sveta,
that you were prepared for Nadya’s birth and led toward it. So what? You have an intelligent, beautiful daughter. Do you really regret that? And you, Anton? This old fogey had a little fling with your grandmother. You can barely even remember her, and did you ever even think about your grandfather? You didn’t care who he was. Well there he is now, your biological grandfather. It makes no difference to anything.”
“Yes it does!” Nadya protested. “The kids asked me in school: ‘Gorodetsky, are you a Jew?’ And I said there weren’t any Jews in my family. But there are. I lied to them all!”
And that suddenly relieved the tension. Zabulon started laughing first, grunting and hammering his fists on the table. Gesar started smiling, still holding his hand over the cheek that had been slapped first. Olga smiled and shook her head, and even Svetlana couldn’t suppress a chuckle.
“Feeling better now?” Arina asked amicably, and I suddenly suspected that our merriment had been prompted by one of her subtle, inconspicuous witch’s spells. She was very good at doing that sort of thing. “Now, let’s get back to business. The Watch of Six consisted of representatives of the Six Great Parties . . .”
“What a surprise,” said Svetlana.
“First, a vampire,” Arina continued. “A representative of the most ancient Others. The college of vampires was represented in the Watch of Six by Viteslav.”
“May his dust rest in peace,” said Zabulon. “Ah, Kostya, you creep—just look who you killed!”
“In fact, none of them are still alive, apart from me,” Arina told us. “Second, the witches. As you already realize, I represented the Conclave. Third, a representative of the Light magicians: Alfred Klaus Lange.”
“He was killed in 1040, in a duel with the Black Magician Christophe Gautier,” Gesar chimed in.
“To be more precise, they killed each other,” Zabulon added. “For some reason they suddenly developed very strong feelings about the relations between Germany and France. A strange business, they seemed to be drawn to each other . . . Ah! I understand!”
“That’s right,” said Arina. “Gauthier represented the Dark Magicians. Obviously there really was some kind of morbid, subconscious attraction between them; they got along very well together in the Sixth Watch.” She squinted sideways at Nadya.
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