‘Never mind what we said,’ Jermenson replied, with a shrug. ‘And anyway . . . if we can spin things out for an hour or two, that could decide everything. He won’t come through the Twilight, Gesar?’
‘No,’ Gesar said firmly.
‘Perhaps we should ask the Inquisition after all . . . or Zabulon . . .’
‘I asked. A quarter of an hour ago. Help was refused.’
‘Then it’s up to us,’ Jermenson declared cheerfully. ‘A very curious experience altogether . . . wouldn’t you say so, Ali?’
‘For sure,’ said Alisher, and shook the hand with the bracelet. His body was enveloped in a white glow. He shook his hand again and the glow faded away.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Jermenson, beaming. ‘I thought there was nothing left that could surprise me, but this Tiger really is a new experience in my life.’
And at that very moment there was a loud crash above us. Rumbling and powerful – as if something had exploded. The magicians raised their heads and listened.
‘Semyon,’ said Gesar. ‘I told him not to interfere . . . It’s a pity we don’t employ corporal punishment in the Watch.’
‘We could introduce it,’ Jermenson said brightly.
‘He’s not overdoing it,’ said Alisher. ‘But the guys don’t want to surrender the office without a fight. Even if it is only symbolic . . .’
Gesar looked at me.
‘Anton, your task is simple. After the Tiger comes down the stairs and appears at that end of the corridor, we’ll have from three to five minutes. You can do something – to ease your conscience. A spell or two, only try not to nettle him . . . And then grab your daughter and leave. She knows how to open a portal.’
‘I can do that too,’ I said without any real conviction.
‘Good. Then leave. And don’t even try to take the young lad with you. No pointless heroics. You’ve still got a long life ahead of you.’
‘All right,’ I said, nodding, disgusted to realise that I really meant it.
‘We’ll do everything we can to try to delay him, and then leave,’ said Gesar, either just for me or for all three of us. ‘A few minutes might be some kind of help . . .’
A piercing whistling sound started up overhead, as if steam under high pressure was escaping from a small aperture. What were they doing up there? Or was that the Tiger?
‘A beautiful scene,’ Jermenson said unexpectedly. ‘And very positive . . . international . . . A Tibetan, a Kazakh and two Jews trying to save a little Russian boy . . .’
‘I’m Uzbek,’ Alisher remarked.
‘I’m not Jewish,’ I commented.
‘With a surname like Gorodetsky?’ Jermenson asked dubiously.
‘It’s an ancient Russian name! From the name of the town on the Volga where my ancestors used to live.’
‘That makes it even more beautiful,’ Jermenson decided. ‘A Tibetan, an Uzbek, a Russian and a Jew . . .’
‘It sounds like the beginning of a joke,’ Alisher muttered.
Gesar gazed at Jermenson and asked: ‘You mean to tell me you’re a Jew, Mark?’
‘Mock on, mock on,’ Jermenson growled.
Overhead something started knocking rapidly – as if someone had turned on a sewing machine. Or started firing a sub-machine gun, which was more probable – it wasn’t likely that the Tiger would leave the boy alone for a pair of well-stitched trousers.
‘Optimists,’ Gesar snorted.
‘Well, why not give it a try?’ Jermenson said, shrugging. ‘You know, when they invented gunpowder I was absolutely delighted. Nothing better against carrion raised from the dead.’
The light bulbs in the corridor suddenly blinked and went out. A moment later they started glowing again, but dimly – the emergency generator had cut in. But a couple of seconds after that they went out and stayed out.
I waved my hand and hung several magical lights along the length of the corridor. Gesar snapped his fingers and extinguished the two closest to us, then growled: ‘Will you ever learn . . .’
We distinctly heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Not rapid, but confident. The Tiger stepped down onto the floor and stopped at the far end of the corridor. He looked in our direction – the darkness didn’t seem to bother him. He smiled and took a step forward.
There was a crash and the Tiger was enveloped in a frosty white vortex. Like mist or a blizzard . . . The Tiger froze for a second and then, with a certain effort, took another step, heading towards us.
‘I told you it wouldn’t work,’ Gesar called back over his shoulder.
‘But it was worth a try!’ Jermenson replied resentfully.
The two Higher Ones stepped forward together, shielding Alisher and me. And at that moment the door behind our backs slammed. I looked round and saw Nadya.
My daughter looked thoughtful, but pleased about something. She walked up to me, took my hand and asked: ‘Is that him?’
Meanwhile the Tiger had stopped moving. An expression of perplexed confusion appeared on his face, as if a Zero-Level Absolute Enchantress was something that his plans hadn’t taken into account.
‘Who do you see?’ I asked her. ‘A little girl?’
‘No. A tiger. He’s big and stripy and his eyes are blazing.’
‘Beautiful,’ I sighed.
‘Daddy, you shouldn’t kill tigers. They’re in the Red Book.’
‘It’s all right to kill this one,’ I said. ‘Only we can’t seem to manage it somehow.’
And suddenly the Tiger spoke. During our previous encounter he hadn’t uttered a word and, to be honest, I’d been certain that he didn’t know how to talk . . .
‘Go away. I don’t want you.’
‘And we don’t want you,’ Gesar replied. ‘Why don’t you go away?’
The Tiger shook his head. (I wondered how Nadya saw that. A talking tiger? Shere Khan from the cartoon film about Mowgli?) ‘The prophecy must not be heard.’
‘He’s only a little boy,’ said Gesar. ‘Leave him alone, give him time. Let the prophecy be uttered into the empty air. Let no one hear it.’
‘A risk,’ said the Tiger. ‘He is a Prophet first and foremost. And then a little boy. Leave.’
‘Give him time,’ Gesar repeated.
Instead of answering, the Tiger started advancing again. Apparently the time for talking was over.
I didn’t understand exactly what it was the Great Ones did. The corridor was suddenly swathed in a multicoloured fiery cobweb, with blue, green and orange threads strung through the air. The Tiger ran into them and his face contorted, as if in pain. But he carried on walking. Slowly, but surely.
‘Anton, leave!’ Gesar barked.
I looked at Nadya. Squeezed her hand tighter. Nodded.
‘Do we have to go, daddy?’ she asked very calmly.
I nodded again.
‘He only needs just a little bit longer,’ said Nadya. ‘Why don’t I—’
‘We’re leaving!’ I shouted. ‘Open the portal. I order you to!’
‘Daddy, you can’t order me to run away!’
‘I’m not ordering you as your daddy, but as a member of the Watch!’
Nadya looked at me, and I wasn’t sure if it would work. Since she was little we had taught her to respect the Night Watch. Explained that what members of the Watch said was an order. That magic was not to be played with. But she was a little girl, for her all fairy tales had a happy ending – and I saw an energy that could engulf the whole of Moscow raging in her eyes . . . only no one knew if it would be any use against the Tiger.
‘Nadya, please,’ I repeated wearily.
Tears glinted in my daughter’s eyes. She pressed her lips together and nodded – and a portal opened up beside us. I glanced at the Tiger – he had already walked halfway along the corridor. He wasn’t attacking, we weren’t his enemies . . . We were no hindrance to him, he was on his way to kill the Prophet.
I took hold of Nadya’s hand and tugged her towards the portal . . .
And at that instant the Tiger stopped. He raised his hand and rubbed his forehead in a perfectly human gesture. And smiled.
The door behind our backs opened and the little Prophet Kesha came out into the corridor. He was soaking wet, like some fat man who has been forced to train in the gym. His eyes looked slightly drowsy and dopey, he gazed at us perplexedly, barely even recognising us. His nose was bleeding.
‘Everything is all right,’ said the Tiger. ‘I am leaving.’
Apparently he was simply going to walk away – along the corridor. But the floor under his feet suddenly shattered, spraying planks and small chunks of concrete in all directions. The golem that Jermenson had set in motion during the first skirmish had caught up with its adversary after all.
With an expression of extreme surprise on his face, the Tiger tumbled down into a pit, where the earth was heaving like boiling porridge. I caught a glimpse of the golem’s hands, the Tiger’s leg . . . For a second, I thought I could see a long, stripy tail sticking up out of the ground like a giant worm . . .
Then it all disappeared.
‘I’m afraid the golem hasn’t killed him,’ said Jermenson. ‘I’m afraid the Tiger simply didn’t think it necessary to fight . . .’
The coloured cobweb faded away. Gesar and Jermenson looked at each other, slowly breaking into smiles.
I leaned down to Nadya and asked in a quiet voice: ‘How did you help him?’
Glancing round at Kesha, Nadya went up on tiptoe and whispered in my ear.
‘I said that if he didn’t speak out his stupid prophecy right now, I was going to give him a thrashing and tell everyone that he’d been beaten by a little girl.’
‘And he believed you?’ I asked.
‘I punched him in the nose.’
I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and walked over to the boy. Handing him the handkerchief, I said: ‘Tilt your head back and press this against your nose. Now we’ll call a . . . doctor.’
And as he tilted back his head in confusion, I parted his fingers, took the toy that was clenched in them and stuck it in my pocket.
‘We were lucky,’ said Gesar, coming up to us. ‘The prophecy hasn’t been revealed, the Tiger has gone. Congratulations, my lad, all your troubles are behind you!’
‘We were lucky,’ I said, echoing Gesar.
The toy phone I had taken from Kesha was burning a hole in my pocket. I didn’t know if I would risk pressing the button to play back what was recorded on it. Or whether there really was anything recorded on it at all.
But it was certainly a good thing that the Twilight Creature didn’t understand anything about modern children’s toys.
Part Two
DUBIOUS TIMES
PROLOGUE
‘I’LL BE TAKING the lesson today,’ said Gorodetsky. ‘Anna Tikhonovna is ill.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Pavel asked anxiously. ‘Something magical?’
‘Cholecystitis,’ Anton replied.
‘That can be cured with a spell,’ said Pavel. He was not much older than twenty, from the generation that had grown up on computer role-playing games and Harry Potter.
‘It can,’ Anton agreed. ‘But why bother, when you can take a medicine to expel the bile?’
‘Magic’s quicker,’ Pavel persisted.
‘And more complicated. Strangely enough, the illnesses that respond best to magical treatment are the deadly ones. Plain ordinary colds, gallstones, colic and haemorrhoids are easier to cure by ordinary means. And anyway, it’s always best to economise your Power and your capacity for magical intervention.’
‘What for?’ asked Pavel, glancing round at the other students, as if looking for support. ‘We’re much stronger than the Day Watch.’
‘That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about,’ Anton said, nodding. He walked round the classroom, running his eye over the students: ten Others, ten future magicians and enchantresses. Six adults, four children and juveniles. The usual balance – the age at which a person is identified as an Other can vary greatly. The youngest student, the Prophet Innokentii Tolkov, was ten and a half, and the oldest, the enchantress Galina Stanislavovna, was fifty-two. Some of them would join the Watch, and some would decide to carry on living a human life . . . or almost human.
‘How many students do you think there are in the Day Watch?’
‘Ten,’ said Pavel.
‘Afraid not,’ said Gorodetsky, shaking his head.
‘A hundred,’ answered Nadya.
‘That answer doesn’t count. You heard about it at home.’
‘So what?’ Nadya asked indignantly. ‘What difference does it make where I heard it?’
‘Well, you got it wrong anyway,’ said Anton, shrugging. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘A hundred and fifty-three,’ muttered Innokentii.
‘That answer’s acceptable,’ said Gorodetsky, nodding. ‘Although I thought they had a hundred and fifty-one students, but I won’t argue with a Prophet. What does this imbalance tell us?’
‘That there are more bad people in the world than good ones?’ Galina asked in a quiet voice. Before being initiated she had been a teacher of Russian language and literature for senior-school classes in a small town outside Moscow. So Anton supposed she had a right to an assumption like that.
‘Not people, Others!’ Denis corrected her. He was thirty-something, a former soldier who had been discharged from the army during the reforms. Strangely enough, his human profession and his specialisation as an Other coincided – he promised to make a rather good Battle Magician.
‘Sorry, Denis, but people is right,’ Galina Stanislavovna said quietly, but firmly. ‘Others aren’t born bad or good . . . and neither are people, by the way. Others take the side of the Light or the Darkness depending on their state of mind at the time of initiation . . .’
‘One comment,’ said Anton. ‘Who wants to correct that?’
Several students raised their hands. Anton nodded at Farhad, a former manager from an oil company in Kazan. A self-made man with a successful career in business – people like that didn’t often become Light Others.
‘The terms Light Ones and Dark Ones don’t mean good and bad, or good and evil,’ said Farhad. ‘If we divide them using human yardsticks, they are altruists and egotists. Those who want the best for everyone around them and those who want the best for themselves.’
‘And occasionally, for their own personal benefit, Dark Others are capable of doing good for the people around them, while Light Others can occasionally cause them harm,’ said Anton, nodding again. ‘That’s right. Although I am surprised that you’re still poring over the basics . . . What does the Day Watch’s fifteen-fold advantage over us signify?’
‘There are more egotists among people,’ said Galina Stanislavovna.
‘The Night Watch isn’t as good at looking for future Others,’ suggested Denis.
‘Both explanations are good,’ said Anton. ‘We won’t try to determine how correct they are just yet. Tell me, in that case, why is the balance between the Watches maintained?’
‘Because you’re a Higher Other,’ said Denis. ‘So is Gesar, and Svetlana . . . and Nadenka’s an Absolute Enchantress!’
Gorodetsky nodded.
‘That’s right. The Night Watch has significantly fewer members, but at the same time we have a greater number of powerful magicians. And to get back to the previous question, this has been the normal situation over many centuries. There really are more Dark Ones. The Light Ones really are more powerful. Overall, there’s parity. And that, Pavel, is why you shouldn’t use magic for every tiny little thing. Where you can put your trust in science, that’s what you should do.’
Pavel nodded, although, to judge from his expression, Gorodetsky hadn’t convinced him completely.
‘Anton, have there ever been any attempts to alter the balance of power?’ asked Galina Stanislavovna.
‘Of course there have,’ said Anton, nodding. ‘The most far-reac
hing of them was called the Great October Revolution. Communist ideology was based on altruism and the experiment by the Russian Watches was officially sanctioned. Essentially, it was the greatest intervention by Others in human life after the Renaissance, the Great Plague and the independence of the North American states.’
‘And the Dark Ones allowed it?’ Galina asked in amazement.
‘Of course. In the first place, they were in our debt . . .’
‘For the independence of the USA?’ Denis chuckled.
‘No, for the Renaissance. And in the second place, the Dark Ones were of the opinion that the dissemination of communist ideology among people was bound to produce an increase in egotism and dark emotions.’
‘And were they proved right?’ Galina asked indignantly.
‘No. We were all wrong. It didn’t change the balance of egotists and altruists at all, in the world at large or in Russia. After that the tacitly accepted general opinion was that the ratio of “one to fifteen” or, more precisely, “one to sixteen”, is a constant that expresses the balance of altruists and egotists among human beings.’
‘But what is it in the USA, for instance?’ enquired David Saakyan. The seventeen-year-old school pupil had been initiated only a month earlier, and he was interested in absolutely everything.
‘In the USA, Sweden, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Estonia, Brazil . . . anywhere you like – the ratio is exactly the same. Unfortunately it has turned out that neither the social system, nor the standard of living, nor the dominant ideology have the slightest influence on the ratio of potential Light Ones and Dark Ones. Therefore it’s a constant. Of course, powerful social upheavals bring about shifts in one direction or the other – but sooner or later they are smoothed out. And whether people belong to the Christian or Muslim faith, or any other, doesn’t change the ratio.’
‘Daddy, but that can’t be right,’ Nadya objected indignantly. ‘People act differently everywhere!’
‘Yes,’ Anton said, with a nod. ‘Of course they do er . . . Nadezhda Antonovna. The way people behave depends on the basic moral tenets and norms in a society. Naturally, the Khmer Rouge, Al-Qaeda terrorists, respectable middle-class Europeans and, say, members of the Komsomol in the 1930s, would behave quite differently in identical situations. But that wouldn’t change the essential point. The ratio of altruists and egotists, even among Benedictine monks and members of the Gestapo, is the same. It’s just that their altruism and egotism are expressed differently.’