Semyon walked into Gesar's office, froze for a moment just inside the door, and shook his head very slightly.
"He's not in Moscow. Definitely not."
"That's kind of stupid," Ignat snorted from his armchair. "If he's supposed to do something with the Talon in Moscow, then what's the point of opening a portal to somewhere outside the city?"
Gesar glanced sideways at Ignat. There was something mysterious in his glance: The first name that came to mind for it was "higher knowledge."
"Maybe not so stupid," he objected quietly. "The Dark One had no choice. Either stay in Moscow and lose the Talon, or clear out and take the Talon with him, and then try to break back in again. What's bad about all this is that the Brothers managed to get the Talon to this Dark One from Ukraine, and he managed to trick us."
Gesar sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and corrected himself: "No, not us, of course... It was me he tricked. Me."
Svetlana was huddling miserably in the corner of the divan by the window. She started sobbing again. "I'm sorry, Boris Ignatievich..."
So far Anton had been sitting as straight as a ramrod, but now he moved close to her and put his arm around her shoulders without speaking.
"Don't cry, Svetlana. It's not your fault. If I couldn't guess what the Dark One was going to do, then you can't possibly be blamed for anything." Gesar's voice was cool, but basically neutral. The chief of the Night Watch really didn't have anything to reproach Svetlana with¡ªwhat had happened was simply beyond the range of her present knowledge and skills.
"There's just one thing I don't understand," Olga said abruptly. She was sitting on the pouffe between Gesar's desk and the window, smoking nervously. "If the Dark One's actions couldn't be read in advance at all, doesn't that mean he was acting on intuition? Without planning or thinking anything through in advance?"
"Yes, it does," Gesar agreed. "He prefers to create probabilities, rather than choose from the ones that already exist. It's a pretty bold way of doing things, but it has its dangers. Intuition can be deceptive. And that's how we'll get him."
There was a brief silence; Semyon walked silently across the office and sat on the divan, a little distance away from Anton and Svetlana.
"Actually, there's something else bothering me," Gesar said darkly, reaching into his pocket and taking out a pack of Pall Malls. He looked at it in surprise, put it back in his pocket, and took out a Cuban cigar in a metal tube, a clipper to cut off its tip, and a huge tabletop ashtray. But he didn't open the cigar. "Something quite different."
"The fact that the Dark One had no trouble using the energy of the portal and some of Svetlana's too?" Semyon asked, guessing immediately. "But that was to be expected."
"Why was it?" Gesar asked cautiously.
Semyon shrugged.
"It seems to me that he's more powerful than we think. He simply disguises the fact. In principle Ilya and I, and even Garik, can make use of the Dark Ones' Power. Under certain circumstances. And with certain consequences for ourselves."
"But not so brazenly and not so quickly," Gesar said with a shake of his head. "Remember Spain. When Avvakum tried to draw Power from the Dark portal. Remember how that ended?"
"I remember," said Semyon, not fazed in the least. "All that means is that our Dark One is significantly more powerful than Avvakum. And nothing else."
Gesar looked at Semyon for a few seconds, then shook his head and turned his gaze to Svetlana.
"Sveta," he said in a voice that was noticeably gentler. "Try once again to remember everything that you felt at the time. But don't hurry. And please, don't get upset. You did everything right, the trouble is it just turned out not to be enough."
Semyon glanced in surprise at Svetlana, with the expression of someone who has missed the most interesting thing. "What do you mean, try to remember? Create the image and the job's done," he advised them.
"The image won't materialize," Gesar growled. "That's the whole problem. What does materialize is some kind of gibberish, not an image."
"And have you tried creating a different one?" Semyon asked eagerly. "An abstract image, not connected with the Dark One?"
"She has," Gesar answered for Svetlana. "Any other image is okay, but this one just doesn't work."
"Hmm," Semyon muttered. "Maybe the impressions are too vivid, too oppressive. Remember how I tried for twenty years to recreate the image of the Inferno vortex over the Reichstag when Hitler was speaking. But I just couldn't get it to look real..."
"We're not talking here about trying to get it to look real," said Gesar. "There isn't any picture at all. Just a gray blur, as if Svetlana's trying to remember the Twilight world."
Anton, who still hadn't uttered a single word, glanced hopefully at Sveta.
"Well, then," she began. "At first I didn't notice anything at all. When you left to follow the Brother who made a run for it, Boris Ignatievich, I stayed with the portal. Then I noticed that the Dark Ones on the floor had started moving and I fed some
Power into your Net. The Dark Ones were pressed flat against the floor again; then you came back. And almost immediately¡ª it was like a fainting fit, everything went black, I felt weak... And then there's a blank. I came around on the floor when Anton splashed water in my face. The memories are all I have left... And I can't even remember anything properly." The enchantress bit her lip, as if she were about to burst into tears. Anton looked at her as if he hoped just his look would be enough to calm her down.
"I have no rational explanation," Ilya put in. "There's simply nothing to go on¡ªtoo little data."
"There's more than enough data," Gesar snorted. "But I don't have any explanation either... Not in the sense of a hundred percent correct explanation. I have a few suspicions of my own, but they need to be checked out. Olga?"
Olga shrugged. "If you have nothing to say, I won't even try. Either he's a top-flight magician who's never been registered anywhere by anyone, or someone's messing with our heads. For instance, I still can't understand why Zabulon hasn't got involved. You'd think smuggling in the Talon was an operation of supreme importance. But he hasn't raised a finger to help his rabble."
"That's right," Gesar drawled thoughtfully and finally took the cigar out of its tube, looked at it carefully, breathed in the aroma of its tobacco with obvious delight, and put it away again. "The Moscow Day Watch might have nothing at all to do with the operation to smuggle in Fafnir's Talon. The Regin Brothers could easily have been acting on their own initiative. In that case we have absolutely no claims against Zabulon. His rabble appears to have been acting independently. And not all that effectively, either, otherwise they'd never have allowed us to intercept the Brothers."
"What good are the Brothers to us, boss?" Ignat said in annoyance, getting up. "If the Dark One from Ukraine really is predestined for the Talon, then the Dark Ones won the fight at the airport."
"If the Dark One from Ukraine was predestined for the Talon," Gesar said in a quiet voice, "we'd all be settling into spending the rest of eternity in the Twilight. Even I wouldn't have been able to save any of you. Not any of you. Is that clear, Ignat?"
"Is that right?" Semyon asked calmly. "It's that serious?"
"It's exactly right, Semyon. I have only one hope: The Dark One doesn't even understand his own role in all this yet. That's why he's thrashing about like this. Our only chance is to outguess him and take the Talon. And in principle that would balance out the odds."
"But how can we outguess him?" Ignat persisted. "Maybe I should try talking to him, convincing him. I'm good at convincing people. If only we can find him..."
"The Dark One won't be able to just sit around doing nothing with the Talon burning his fingers. He's bound to turn up in Moscow." Gesar stood up and surveyed his subordinates, then rubbed his cheek in a tired gesture. "That's it. Get some rest. Everybody get some rest."
He turned to Anton.
"Anton... Stay close to Sveta. Stick like glue. And you shouldn't go home¡ªnot to your place or hers. Stay here."
"All right, Boris Ignatievich," said Anton. He still had his arm around Sveta's shoulders.
Ten minutes later Anton and Sveta were alone in the comfortable duty staff lounge. Anton held out his mini-disk player and the earphones to the exhausted enchantress.
"You know," he said, "there's this sort of game I play. There's a lot of music on that disk. All sorts. I put it on random selection, but somehow it always comes up with the songs I need. Why don't you give it a try?"
Svetlana smiled faintly and took the earphones.
"Press here."
She pressed the button. The player blinked its green eye as it spun the disk; the laser slid across the tracks and stopped on one.
I dream of dogs and of wild beasts, I dream that animals with eyes like lamps Bit into my wings high in the heavens, And I fell clumsily, like a fallen angel...
"It's Nautilus Pompilius," said Svetlana, adjusting the earphones slightly. "'Fallen Angel." It certainly suits the mood..."
"You know," Anton told her with emphatic seriousness, "call me superstitious, but I was sure Nautilus would come up. I really love that song."
"Let's listen to it together," Svetlana suggested, sitting down on the divan.
"Okay," Anton agreed, and mentally thanked the person who invented mini-earphones with no hard frame.
I don't remember the fall, I only remember The impact as I struck the cold stones. How could I have flown so high and then Tumbled down so cruelly, like a fallen angel? Straight back down into the place that we Had left behind, hoping for a new life. Straight back down into the place from where We stared avidly up into the blue heavens. Straight down...
They sat there for a long time with their arms round each other, each with a tiny Nautilus Pompilius singing in one ear. The three of them shared the feeling of bitterness and happiness¡ªthe magician, the enchantress, and the fallen angel.
"But when I went into the terminal building," Shagron said, "there was nobody there. They'd just closed the portal, over near the entrance, just a bit to the right, where the baggage hall is. The Light Ones had already removed their HQ and I could just barely sense them, somewhere near the edge of the airport.
Either they were getting into their vehicles or they'd already driven off."
"What about the Brothers?" Edgar asked.
"Damned if I know what's happened to them. I think one of them got killed. The Light Ones immobilized the others and took them away with them."
"What for?" Deniska asked in surprise, even putting down his coffee. "Why didn't they finish them off on the spot?"
"Come on, they're Light Ones!" said Yura, amazed by the question. "The Brothers surrendered, so they just arrested them. They'll probably hand them over to the Inquisition... The sadists. It would have been better just to kill them."
"I think he got away after all," said Nikolai, toying idly with his discharged wand. The Power it had contained only recently had melted the snow on the airport runway in a few brief moments and then dried out the ground. "Well, Yura, what do you think?"
"I can't sense the Talon. It's not in Moscow."
"But how could he have got away?" said Anna Tikhonovna. She kept pursing her lips, and it made her look like a strict school teacher. "How could he slip through Gesar's fingers? Somehow I can't believe it."
"I don't know," Yura snapped, "but something happened back there."
"Maybe he could have used a portal?" Edgar asked cautiously.
"A portal?!" Yura snorted. "Can you use a portal?"
"Not easily," Edgar admitted. "I don't have the Power."
"Oh!" Yura said emphatically, jabbing his finger toward the ceiling in a vague gesture. "And apart from that, after the fight on the boulevard our friend looked like a squeezed lemon."
"But after the fight in the airport it was the Light Ones' enchantress who looked like a squeezed lemon," Nikolai remarked innocently. "And don't anyone try to convince me she gave the Power away voluntarily."
"Yes, that's right," said Shagron, brightening up. "When you think about it, the energy picture of events at Vnukovo looks pretty much like straightforward vampirism. Everything was kind of purple..."
Yura shook his head skeptically.
"I must admit the Ukrainian didn't strike me as capable of that. In order to snatch Power from the Light enchantress right under Gesar's nose, you have to be Zabulon at least. And have the right to a first-level intervention..."
"What have rights got to do with it?" Anna Tikhonovna exploded. "During the last twenty-four hours we've registered three gross violations of the Treaty by the Light Ones, including one violent attack using Power! The Light Ones have forgotten what rights mean!"
"Anna Tikhonovna," Edgar said with feeling. "The Inquisition has given the Light Ones another indulgence. As long as their actions are directed to returning the stolen artifact, the Treaty is suspended. Until Fafnir's Talon is handed over to the Inquisition, the Night Watch has the right to do whatever it likes. In effect, we're at war. Like in '49¡ªyou should remember that."
The silence in the room was like outer space.
"And you didn't say anything?" Anna Tikhonovna asked reproachfully.
"What's the point of making our young people nervous? I'm sorry, Deniska. We're already at a disadvantage as it is. First¡ªthe chief isn't here, and second¡ªwe've just had two pretty unsuccessful years... How many times have we been forced to give way to the Light Ones during those two years? Five, ten?"
"So we're trying to avoid defeatist attitudes, are we?" Yura inquired acidly. "Keeping quiet about things? Protecting the young people from pernicious influences? Well, well..."
"What's the point of just saying 'well, well'?" Edgar snarled. "Why don't you try suggesting where we go from here?"
"The chief left you in charge," Yura said indifferently. "So you do the thinking."
"You and Kolya refused, that's why he appointed me," said Edgar, turning gloomy and sulky. "Some fighters you are..."
"Hey, boys, just shut it, will you!" said Anna Tikhonovna, turning scarlet with indignation. "This isn't the right time. Even my witches work together better than this."
"Okay, let's forget it," said Yura with a wave of his hand. "You're asking me what we do now? Nothing. The Ukrainian can't go too far out of Moscow. I think he has the Talon with him. If he hasn't done anything yet, it means the time still hasn't come. We wait until he comes back. He has to come back¡ªthe Talon has to be in Moscow within the next two days. Otherwise the probability peak will have passed, and it will just be a powerful artifact, nothing more."
Nikolai nodded approvingly.
Edgar looked closely, first at one magician, then the other.
"Then we wait," he sighed. And he added: "Yes. Our Ukrainian friend has turned out to be cunning, all right. More cunning than Gesar."
"Ne kazhi gop," Kolya advised him. "That's Ukrainian for 'don't count your chickens'..."
"Anna Tikhonovna," Shagron asked in a rather ingratiating tone, "tell the girls to make some coffee. After all this, I feel like I can hardly move..."
"You're an idle lazybones, Shagron," said Anna Tikhonovna with a shake of her head. "But all right, I'll be nice to you, since you distinguished yourself. You'll be an example for the others."
Shagron grinned happily.
To my great amazement, it was warm in the tent all night long. Of course, we slept without getting undressed¡ªI just took off my jacket and my shoes and climbed into the sleeping bag I was offered. The tent belonged to the bearded Matvei, and it could have held three or even four people if necessary, but there were just the two of us. The next tent was about twenty meters away. Immediately after everyone wandered away from the campfire, I could hear the birthday girl moaning sweetly in it, wrapped in someone's tight embrace¡ªso we weren't the only ones who
were warm. It was strange. As a southerner, I'd always thought it was cold and miserable in the forest in winter.
I'd been wrong. Maybe it was cold and miserable in the forest, but man can bring his own warmth and comfort with him anywhere he goes. Of course, nature has to suffer a bit as a result, but that's a different matter. A different matter altogether...
Matvei woke up first. He crawled out of his sleeping bag, stopped at the entrance for a minute as he fiddled with his stylish mountain boots (far superior to my clumsy, thick-soled shoes), unlaced the flap, and went outside. A breath of frost immediately licked at my face. At the same time I felt against my chest the elongated object that the Vikings had passed on to me at the airport. I hadn't taken a proper look at it since then¡ª there hadn't been any opportunity.
And I also realized that overnight the cocoon, which hadn't been fed any further energy, had melted away. I could feel a breath of Power from the object. Or rather, not Power, but power. If there had been even one Other there, he couldn't have helped sensing the Talon.
I pulled the long, curved object¡ªa case?¡ªout from under my sweater. It looked like a scabbard for a dagger, but it opened like a bivalve seashell. That is, of course, if there are any shells like that in the sea¡ªthirty or thirty-five centimeters long, and narrow.
The case was locked in the Twilight, so no ordinary person could possibly have opened it. Crossing my eyes, I moved closer to the entrance of the tent and threw the flap back a bit so that there was more light.
Inside, lying on dark red velvet, there really was a blackish-blue claw from some huge beast. It looked as sharp as a Circassian dagger¡ªstretching along the entire length of its curved inner surface, there was a groove that looked like it was for drawing blood. The wide end looked as if it had been roughly broken off, like the talon had been hacked out of someone's foot very crudely, with no ceremony. And I supposed it probably had been.
But then, what kind of beast could have had talons like this? It would have to be some kind of legendary dragon. What else could it be? But did dragons ever really exist? I rummaged through my memory, trying to find an answer to this question, and shook my head doubtfully. Witches and vampires were one thing¡ªthey were just Others¡ªbut dragons...
The snow squeaked under Matvei's feet as he walked back from the stream. With a regretful sigh, I slipped into the Twilight for a moment, closed the case and stuck it back under my sweater.
"Awake already?" Matvei asked as he came closer.
"Uh-huh."
"You weren't cold, then?"
"No. It's incredible. I thought in the middle of winter, in the forest, I was bound to feel cold. But it was warm..."
"You southerners are strange people!" Matvei laughed. "You think what we have here is a real frost? In Siberia they have real frosts. You know what they say? A Siberian isn't someone who doesn't feel the cold, he's someone who's warmly dressed!"
I laughed. It was well put. I ought to remember that.
Matvei smiled into his beard too.
"There's a stream over there. You can get a wash."
"Aha." I clambered out of the tent and took a short walk to the frozen stream. At the point where the path reached the low bank, someone had broken a neat hole in the ice: Overnight the hole had frozen over with a thin, almost transparent layer of ice, but Matvei had broken it open again. The water was cold, but not cold enough to make even my warmth-loving soul afraid of splashing a few handfuls onto my face. The wash invigorated me, and I immediately felt I wanted to do something, run somewhere...
Or perhaps it wasn't the wash at all. The day before I'd almost completely drained myself before the airport. And I'd felt exactly the way you'd expect. I'd grabbed some Power from the portal and a little bit from the enchantress, and then expended almost all of it again. But overnight I'd apparently been drawing Power from the Talon.
Its Power was the right kind¡ªDark Power. I hadn't really enjoyed using the Light Ones' Power¡ªit was alien, hard to control. But the Talon's Power was like mother's milk to a little infant. It even seemed to breathe in a mysterious way that was almost painfully familiar.
I felt as if I could overturn mountains.
"When are you planning to break camp?" I asked when I got back to the tent. Or rather, not to the tent, but the camp-fire. Matvei was chopping firewood. The two dogs were circling around him, gazing hungrily up at the pot hanging over the fire.
"When everyone wakes up, we'll warm up the pilaff, take another shot of vodka to warm ourselves up and then we'll move on. Why? Are you in a hurry?"
"I probably ought to get going soon," I said vaguely.
"Well, if you're in a hurry, go. Keep the jacket... I'll give you Styopa's address, you can take it around sometime."
If only you knew who you're helping, human...
"Matvei," I said in a low voice, "I seriously doubt that I'll have a chance to go looking for Styopa. Thanks, but I won't freeze."
"Don't be silly," said Matvei, straightening up and holding the ax out in his hand. "If you don't give it back, you don't. Your health's more important."
I tried to make my smile look wise and sad.
"Matvei... it's a good thing there's nobody else here. You know, I'm not actually human."
Matvei's eyes immediately glazed over in boredom. He'd probably decided I was some kind of crazy psychic charlatan. Well... I'd just have to prove it to him.
Both dogs instantly lost their joyful bounce, started whining, and huddled down at Matvei's feet. I raised my barely visible morning shadow from the snow and slipped into the Twilight.
Matvei's reaction was funny to watch¡ªhe was so startled he dropped his ax. It landed on the Newfoundland terrier's paw and the poor dog yelped deafeningly.
Matvei couldn't see me. But he wasn't supposed to see me.
I pulled off the jacket; Matvei wouldn't be able to see it either, until I threw it out of the Twilight. I felt for some money in my shirt pocket and stuck two hundred-dollar bills in the pocket of the jacket. Then I tossed it at Matvei.
Matvei shuddered and caught the jacket awkwardly when, as far as he could tell, it suddenly appeared out of thin air. He looked around and, to be quite honest, he looked rather pitiful, but I could tell that without this kind of demonstration there was no way I could ever convince him.
I didn't want to take anything belonging to anyone else away with me, not even a lousy jacket. If people ask no questions and help a stranger who comes wandering up to their camp-fire out of the forest, you shouldn't take anything from them if you can avoid it. The jacket was comfortable and obviously not cheap. I didn't want it. I'm a Dark One. I don't need other people's things.
I emerged from the Twilight behind Matvei's back. He carried on staring wildly into empty space.
"Here I am," I said, and Matvei swung around abruptly. His eyes were completely crazy now.
"A-a-a-a..." he murmured and fell silent.
"Thanks, I really will get by without the jacket."
Matvei nodded. He obviously didn't feel like objecting anymore. I think he was seriously concerned that he'd spent the night in a tent with some kind of monster who could disappear in front of his eyes. And who knew what he might be capable of apart from that?
"Just tell me one thing: How do I get away from here?"
"That way," said Matvei, waving his hand in the direction of the path I'd followed to get there. "The trains are already running."
"And is there a highway over there? I'd rather hitch a ride."
"There's a highway. Right behind the railroad."
"Excellent," I said in delight. "Okay, be seeing you! Thanks again. Give the birthday girl my congratulations... and I tell you what... give her this..."
It was remarkable how easily I managed the simple, but unfamiliar spell. I put my hand behind my back, touched a frozen twig, broke it off... and held out a living rose, only just cut from the bush. There were drops of dew glistening on the small green leaves and the petals were flame-red. A fresh rose looks very beautiful in a snowy forest.
"A-a-a..." Matvei mumbled as he automatically took the rose. I wondered if he'd give it to the birthday girl or just bury it in a snowdrift to avoid the hassle of having to give long, awkward explanations.
But I didn't ask. I withdrew into the Twilight again. I certainly didn't want to drag myself over the frozen snow again. And what had been good for the previous day, when I thought I was running away from Gesar, was no good today, when I was rested and full of fresh Power.
There was something else I'd forgotten... Ah, yes! The hat. That wasn't mine either, and I was still wearing it. I tossed it onto the jacket... and set off.
I moved in leaps of a hundred or two hundred meters, opening weak little portals at the limit of my visibility and stepping through them, eating up the distance like a giant.
By day the clearing looked perfectly ordinary. All of its magical charm had completely disappeared. It was obviously no accident that the genuine romantics and lovers of freedom¡ªthe Dark Ones¡ªhad chosen the night as their time, and not the day, when all the dirt and garbage of the world assaults your eyes, when you can see how unattractive and cluttered our cities are, when the streets are full of stupid people and the roads are full of stinking automobiles. Day is the time of bonds and chains, of duty and rules, but Night is the time of Freedom.
And for a genuine Other, nothing can take the place of that Freedom. Neither ephemeral Duty, nor service to cheap, fuzzy ideals invented by someone long before you were even born. That's all a myth, a fiction, ucho od sledzia¡ªear of the fish¡ªas our Slav brothers, the Poles, say. There is only Freedom, for everybody alike, and there is only one limitation: No one has the right to limit the Freedom of others. And let the cunning and hypocritical Light Ones seek apparent paradoxes and contradictions in this¡ªeveryone who is Free gets along just fine with others who are just as Free, and they don't get in each other's way at all.
I had to use my Other powers to stop a car¡ªfor some reason no one wanted to pick up a man without any jacket or coat. I had to touch the mind of one of the drivers in his dolled-up Zhiguli 9, the color of wet asphalt.
Naturally, he stopped.
The driver was a young guy of about twenty-five with short-cropped hair and absolutely no neck. His head was just attached in a very natural way directly to his body and his eyes were blank. But his reflexes turned out to be quite fantastic. I seriously suspected that he could have driven the car even if he was unconscious.
"Eh?" he said to me when I'd made myself comfortable in the back, beside his huge leather jacket.
"Drive on, drive on. To Moscow. You'll let me out on Tver-skaya Street."
And I touched him gently again through the Twilight.
"Ah..." the young guy said, and set his Zhiguli moving. Despite the slippery road and the trance he'd been put in, he drove at over a hundred kilometers an hour. The car held the road so magnificently, I wondered if he had special tires on it.
We drove into Moscow from the northwest side after turning onto the Volokolamsk Highway, which meant we sliced through half of the megalopolis very quickly, driving in a straight line almost the whole time, straight to the Day Watch office on Tverskaya Street.
I was lucky to have found such a remarkable driver, and the highway encouraged him to put his foot down to the floor. Plus, we rode a wave of green lights.
As we were driving past the Sokol metro station, I realized they'd spotted me.
Me and the Talon.
But in the middle of Moscow it's almost impossible to catch a Zhiguli 9 hurtling along in a straight line without changing lanes.
I got out on Tverskaya Street and handed the neckless driver a hundred. Rubles, not dollars.
"Eh?" he gasped out and started gazing around. Of course, he didn't remember a thing, and now he was straining his meager intellect to solve the almost insoluble puzzle of how he'd got from a suburban Moscow highway to the very center of the city.
I didn't interfere and left him alone with his unsolved puzzle.
He had really tremendous reflexes: the Zhiguli set off almost immediately. But the young guy's face was turned toward the side window, with his jaw hanging open. It was still like that when he drove out of sight. I crossed the street and headed for the entrance to the office.
The lobby was full of cigarette smoke and a tape deck¡ªa Phillips boom box¡ªwas quietly playing some song with a laid-back, powerful melody. The voice was so hoarse and low I didn't realize straight away that it was Butusov:
The wind is cold through the open window,
And long shadows lie on the table,
I am a mysterious guest in a silver cloak,
And you know why I have come to you.
To give you strength,
To give you power,
To kiss your neck,
Kiss to my heart's content!
At the sight of me, the young vampire who had his eyes half-closed and was blissfully lip-synching along, was struck dumb. But the other guard on duty, an equally young alchemist-magician, was already gabbling his report into the phone.
"They're waiting for you," he told me. "Ninth floor."
Even though he'd been struck dumb, the vampire had managed to call the elevator.
But I suddenly got the feeling I shouldn't get into the elevator, and I certainly shouldn't go up in it. I just shouldn't, and that was all.
"Tell them I'm alive and everything's okay," said that someone there inside me.
I went back out onto the street.
I was being guided again. Without the slightest hesitation I turned left¡ªtoward Red Square.
I still didn't know what was driving me and what for. But I could only obey the Power inside me. And I could also feel that Fafnir's Talon had come to life¡ªit was breathing.
Every meter of ground here, every square centimeter of asphalt, was saturated with magic. Old magic that had eaten its way into the stone of the buildings and the dust on the street.
The massive form of the State Historical Museum towered up on my right. I didn't even know if it was still open or whether it had been transformed into a casino by the latest fundamental shift in the history of long-suffering Russia. But anyway, I had no time to find out. I walked on past.
The cobblestones of Red Square, which remembered the leisurely steps of the czars, and the tramping boots of revolutionary soldiers, and the caterpillar treads of Soviet armored monsters, and the columns of May Day demonstrations, seemed like the embodiment of Moscow's unshakable permanence. The city had stood here through the ages. It would always stand here, and nothing¡ªnot the squabbles of ordinary human beings, or even the eternal altercations between the Watches¡ªcould shake its calm grandeur.
I walked out into the square and looked around. Nearby on my left GUM¡ªthe old state department store¡ªwas teeming with life. On my right were the battlements of the Kremlin wall, with the pyramid of Lenin's Mausoleum rising up in front of it. Could that be where I was being led?
No, not there. And that was good. No matter what people in Russia felt about their former leader, it was a sin to disturb the peace of the dead. Especially of those who had died irrevocably, forever¡ªhe wasn't an Other... and it was a good thing he wasn't.
I walked across the square without hurrying. A line of official government cars snaked out of the Kremlin and tore off into the side streets. The Execution Site greeted me in silence. The statue of Citizen Minin and Prince Pozharsky watched as I walked by. The bright-painted domes of St. Basil's Cathedral breathed a sigh.
Power. Power. Power...
There was so much of it here that an Other who had exhausted himself could restore his strength in moments.
But nobody would ever do anything of the kind, because it was strange, alien Power. It belonged to no one. It was unruly and uncontrollable, the Power of the past centuries. The Power of dethroned czars and general secretaries of the Communist Party. Touch it and it would blow you to pieces.
I looked around yet again.
And I spotted him.
The Inquisitor.
It's impossible to confuse an Inquisitor with anyone else, either Light Ones or Dark Ones, let alone an ordinary human being.
The Inquisitor was looking straight at me, and I couldn't understand why I'd only just noticed him now.
He was alone, completely alone, outside and above any worldly balances of power, alliances, and treaties. He embodied Justice and the Inquisition. He maintained Equilibrium. I didn't need to ask what he was there for.
I walked right up to him.
"You did right not to disobey," said the Inquisitor.
Somehow I knew his name was Maxim.
He reached out his hand and said, "The Talon."
There was no imperious tone to his voice, not even a hint of pressure. But I had no doubt that anyone would obey that voice, up to and including the chief of either of the Watches.
I reached gloomily inside my sweater, with obvious regret.
The Talon was seething, processing the surrounding Power. The moment I held it in my hand I was swamped by a dense wave of it. The Power given to me by the Talon rushed into every cell of my body; it felt as if the whole world were ready to go down on its knees and submit to me. To me. The owner of Fafnir's Talon.
"The Talon," the Inquisitor repeated.
He didn't add anything else or tell me not to do anything stupid. The Inquisition is above giving meaningless advice.
But I was still hesitating. How was it possible to give up voluntarily a source of such inexhaustible Power? An artifact like that was every Other's dream!
I automatically noted the redistribution of energy as a Light portal opened up nearby. Of course, it was Gesar, the chief of the Moscow Night Watch.
The Inquisitor didn't react to the appearance of the unexpected witness. Not at all. As if no portal had even opened up and no one had surfaced out of the Twilight.
"The Talon," the Inquisitor repeated for the third time. The third and last. He wouldn't say another word. I knew that.
And I also knew that even if all the Dark Ones of Moscow appeared beside me, it wasn't worth trying anything. They wouldn't help me. On the contrary, they'd take the Inquisitor's side. The intrigues played out around the Talon could only continue until the guardians of the Treaty put in a personal appearance.
I squeezed my eyes shut and drew in as much Power as I
could hold within myself, almost choking on the pressure. With a trembling hand, I held out the case with the artifact in it to the Inquisitor. As I did so, I could just sense the vague desire that Gesar was struggling to control¡ªto dash forward and take possession of the Talon. But naturally, the chief of the Night Watch didn't move a muscle. Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.
The Inquisitor glanced at me. I probably ought to have read satisfaction and approval in his glance: Well done, Dark One, you didn't flinch; you did as you were told, clever boy.
But I couldn't see anything of the kind in the Inquisitor's eyes.
Not a thing.
Gesar was gazing at us with open curiosity.
Without hurrying, the Inquisitor put the case with the Talon into the inside pocket of his jacket and then disappeared into the Twilight without even saying goodbye. I stopped sensing him instantly. Instantly. The Inquisition has its own paths.
"Ha," said Gesar, looking away to one side. "You're a fool, Dark One." Then he looked straight at me, sighed, and added: "A fool, but clever. And that's remarkable."
Then he left too, quietly this time, without any portal. I could still sense him for some time in the deeper layers of the Twilight.
I was left on Red Square, out in the piercing wind, alone, without the Talon after I'd already got used to its Power, with no warm clothes, still wearing the same sweater, trousers, and shoes, and my hair was as tousled as a film actor's in some dramatic solo scene. Only there weren't any viewers to appreciate this fine shot, now that Gesar had gone on his way too.
"You really are a fool, Vitaly Rogoza," I whispered. "A clever and obedient fool. But then, maybe that's the only reason you're still alive?"
But the person inside me suddenly came to life and reassured me: Everything's happening as it should. You did the right thing by getting rid of Fafnir's Talon. I was overwhelmed by such a bliss-ful, unshakeable certainty that I was right, that I even stopped feeling the cold, piercing wind.
Everything was just fine. Everything was right. Children shouldn't play with atom bombs.
I twitched my shoulders, turned around, and strode off in the direction of Tverskaya Street. I'd only gone a few steps when I came across the entire top level of the Day Watch (the only ones missing were the magician Kolya and¡ªnaturally¡ª the chief), plus about fifteen mid-level agents, including Anna Tikhonovna's young witches, three vampire brothers, and a rather stout werewolf. The entire company was staring at me like idle bystanders gaping at a penguin that has escaped from the zoo.
"Hi," I said in a surprisingly cheerful voice. "What are you all doing here, eh?"
I'm getting carried away again, I thought miserably. Oh-oh...
"Tell me, Vitaly," Edgar asked in an odd, unnatural voice, "why did you do that?"
His attention was distracted for a second as he diverted an over-vigilant militiaman who was all set to approach a gathering that he thought looked suspicious. Then his gaze returned to me: "Why?"
"Do the Dark Ones really need a pointless fight? Do they need pointless casualties?" I said, answering a question with a question, like some joker from Odessa.
"I think he's lying," Anna Tikhonovna said aggressively. "Maybe we should probe him?"
Edgar frowned gloomily, as if to say: How can we probe him? So they were already afraid of me in the Day Watch! Would you believe it!
"Anna Tikhonovna," I said, addressing the old witch in a sincere voice, "Fafnir's Talon is an incredibly powerful destabilizing element, capable of disrupting the balance of Power like nothing else. If it had stayed in Moscow, a bloody battle would have been inevitable. As a law-abiding Other, I accepted the Inquisition's verdict and gave back the Talon. That's all I have to say." I was keeping quiet about the Power that had settled in me after my contact with the Talon¡ªuntil the right time came. "Surely you wouldn't have done anything else?" I added, realizing that no one would dare object to that. All of them had wanted to touch the artifact... to draw Power from it... And all of them had been afraid of the consequences of doing it.
"Why don't we go back to the office?" the magician Yura growled. "Instead of standing around in the wind like the three poplars on Plushchikha Street in the old film."
His words made a lot of sense¡ªI was beginning to shiver again, and it would have been unforgivably stupid to waste the Power that I'd stored up.
With Edgar's support, Yura called up an economical portal, and two minutes later the entire Watch had already ridden the elevator up to the office in groups. I couldn't help remarking that my portal would have been more stable and would have worked for longer. Apparently I'd moved up another step on the stairway to nowhere when I parted with Fafnir's Talon. And apparently I was now more powerful than everyone else there, taken together. But I was still as inexperienced and naive as ever, and I still had to learn the most important thing of all: how to use my Power properly.
The technicians, led by the unsleeping Hellemar, were working away hard on their headquarters notebooks. When the hell did these young guys ever rest? Or was it just that they all looked alike?
"What's going on, Hellemar?" Edgar asked.
"The Light Ones are withdrawing their outposts," the werewolf reported cheerfully. "One after another. Not just changing them, but removing them completely. And they've lifted the cordons at the entrances to the city and the railroad stations."
"They've calmed down," sighed Anna Tikhonovna.
"Of course they've calmed down," Yura snapped. "The Talon's gone now. They've probably already transferred it to Berne. In fact, I'd bet on it."
He was right. A few seconds earlier I'd sensed the source of my Power suddenly disappear into the Twilight and move somewhere far, far away. I wondered if I was fated ever to hold it in my hands again just one more time... I didn't know...
"For the life of me, I don't understand why all this fuss over the Talon was started in the first place. What were the Regin Brothers trying to achieve? Why didn't they let us know what they were doing? It's all some kind of crazy nonsense, absolute nonsense."
"And what makes you so sure the Regin Brothers didn't achieve their goal?" I asked innocently. They looked at me as if I were a child who'd asked an awkward question in adult company.
"You have a different opinion?" Yura inquired cautiously, exchanging a quick glance with Edgar.
"Yes," I said honestly. "Only don't ask me about the details¡ª I don't know them anyway. There was a serious imbalance of Power developing in Moscow in favor of the Light Ones. So serious that Europe was beginning to feel worried. Measures were taken. The Regin Brothers' escapade is one piece of a jigsaw that will eventually add up to a new equilibrium."
"And your appearance is another piece of the jigsaw?" Edgar surmised.
"Obviously."
"And the absence from Moscow of Zabulon, our chief?"
"Probably."
The Dark Ones looked at each other, wondering.
"I don't know about that," Anna Tikhonovna drawled in a displeased tone of voice. "It all looks pretty strange. If we had the Talon, we'd soon have the Light Ones in a corner."
"But would we be able to keep it under control?" Yura remarked.
"I don't know..."
"In any case," said Edgar, after thinking for a while, "we still have the right to demand satisfaction from the Light Ones. There were several serious interventions committed. What they've done over the last two days goes way beyond the recent killings. Tiun-nikov's death should really be classed as an accident, and if Gesar tries to dispute that, the tribunal will soon demolish all his arguments. And the vampire poacher and the shape-shifting hooker aren't such very serious violations, only sixth level, or fifth at most. They were acting independently, the Day Watch had nothing to do with it... Now we have the right to demand several second-level interventions at least. That's what I think... So in the final analysis the Day Watch has still come out best from everything that's happened. Even without the chief and his powerful support."
"Better hold the fanfares for a while," Yura remarked skeptically. "Wait and see."
Edgar shrugged and spread his arms in the gesture of a man sticking to his own opinion. He really believed what he'd just said. And I could understand him.
There's no way of knowing how the argument would have ended. The cell phone on Edgar's belt trilled and everyone automatically turned toward him.
It could have been a private call, or a call from the technical section. But the Others gathered together in the office were pretty powerful. Almost all of them were capable of calculating probabilities and the consequences of very simple events.
This call had a dense central thread that was clearly visible. A thread connecting it to events of supreme importance.
Edgar raised the phone to his ear and listened for a while. "Show him through," he said, then canceled the call and put the cell back on his belt. "An Inquisitor," he said with a stony expression, "with an official announcement."
Less than thirty seconds later the warlock from the duty watch opened the door into the Day Watch main office. And a second after that the impassive Inquisitor called Maxim strode in through the doorway.
There was absolutely no emotion or other coloration in his voice; his tone was strictly informative. And it would have been stupid to suspect an Inquisitor of sympathizing with one side or the other. "In the name of the Treaty," he declared, "tomorrow at dawn there will be an extended session of the local board of the Tribunal, under the patronage of the Inquisition. The subject is a number of actions taken by Light Others and a number of actions taken by Dark Others which are incompatible with the stipulations of the Treaty. Attendance is compulsory for all who have been informed. If anyone who has been informed fails to attend or arrives late, it will be regarded as an act incompatible with the stipulations of the Treaty. Until the session starts all magical interventions at the fifth level of Power and above are prohibited. May Equilibrium triumph."
When he finished his speech, the Inquisitor turned around unhurriedly and walked out into the lobby, to the elevators. The warlock cast a fleeting glance at his superiors and closed the door behind him. He regarded it as his duty to show the Inquisitor out. The office was quiet for a while; even the technicians and their notebooks had fallen silent.
"Just like in '49," Anna Tikhonovna remarked quietly. "Exactly the same."
"Let's hope so," the magician Yura said in a low voice. "Let's hope so, Anna Tikhonovna. Let's hope real hard."