'How do you think everything's going to turn out?'
'I raised the alarm in time, so the witch can't leave this district,' Edgar said guardedly. 'The trackers move in now, we'll check everything and arrest Arina. Put her on trial. If you're needed, you'll be called as a witness.'
I didn't completely share Edgar's optimism, but I nodded. He should know better than me what the Inquisition was capable of.
'And the werewolves?'
'That's the Night Watch's prerogative, right?' Edgar said, answering a question with a question. 'If we come across them, we'll let you know, but we won't make a special point of chasing them through the forest. What makes you think they're still here anyway? Typical city types, out in the countryside for a spot of hunting. You should keep a closer eye on your clients, Anton.'
'Somehow I have the feeling they're still here,' I muttered. I really did think so, although I couldn't explain why I was so sure. There was no trace of them in the village . . . and werewolves rarely spend more than twenty-four hours in their wolves' bodies.
'Check the nearby villages,' Edgar advised me. 'At least the one the witch used to go to for her groceries. But really it's a waste of time. After an unsuccessful hunt they just tuck their tails between their legs and go into hiding. I know their type.'
I nodded – it was good advice, even though it was pretty basic. I should have gone round the outlying areas straight away, rather than trying to catch the toothless old witch. Some detective I was – I'd got too interested in that book Fuaran. What I should do was pay more attention to the routine, boring work. Preventive measures were best, as they used to proclaim so correctly in Soviet times.
'Good luck, Edgar,' I said.
'And good luck to you, Anton.' Edgar thought for a moment and added: 'It's a strange situation that's come up – both Watches are mixed up in this business with the witch. You pretty much represent the interests of the Night Watch. I think that Zabulon will send someone too . . . before the situation is resolved.'
I sighed. Things were going from bad to worse.
'I think I can guess who he'll send,' I said. 'Zabulon enjoys causing me petty aggravation.'
'You ought to be glad he hasn't set his mind to serious aggravation,' Edgar said dourly. 'But you'll have to put up with the petty stuff. Nobody has the power to change another person's nature; your friend is a Dark One and he'll die a Dark One.'
'Kostya's already dead. And he's not a person, he's a vampire.'
'What's the difference?' Edgar asked gloomily. He stuck his hands into the pockets of those expensive trousers that he wore so well and hunched his shoulders as he watched the red sun sinking behind the horizon. 'It's all the same in this world, watchman . . .'
Serving in the Inquisition definitely had a strange effect on Others. It made them take a nihilistic view of life. And spout meaningless phrases.
'Good luck,' I repeated and set off down the hill. Edgar lay down on the grass, mercilessly creasing his suit, and gazed up at the sky.
CHAPTER 6
HALFWAY BACK TO the house I met Ksyusha and Romka, striding briskly along the dusty street, holding hands. I waved to them and Ksyusha immediately shouted out:
'Your Nadiushka's gone for a walk to the river with her granny!'
I laughed. Ludmila Ivanovna didn't very often hear herself called 'granny' – and like any other fifty-year-old Moscow woman, she hated the very sound of it.
'Well, I hope they enjoy it,' I said.
'Have you found the wolves yet?' Romka shouted.
'No, your wolves have run away,' I answered.
Maybe, for strictly psychotherapeutic purposes, I ought to have said that I'd caught the wolves and handed them over to the zoo? But then, the little boy didn't seem to be suffering from any lingering fears after his encounter with the werewolves. Arina had done a good job there.
Greeting the small number of villagers I met along the way, I walked to our house. Svetlana had occupied my hammock – with a bottle of beer and the book Fuaran: fact or fiction open at the final pages.
'Interesting?' I asked.
'Uhuh,' Svetlana said with a nod. She was drinking the beer rustic fashion, straight from the bottle. 'It's more fun that Tove Jansson's Moominpappa at Sea. Now I understand why they didn't print all the stories about the Moomintrolls before. The last ones aren't for children at all. Tove Jansson was obviously suffering from depression when she wrote them.'
'An author has the right to get depressed too,' I said.
'Not if she writes children's books, she doesn't!' Svetlana exclaimed sternly. 'Children's books should be heart-warming. Otherwise it's just like a tractor driver ploughing a field crookedly and then saying: "Ah, I was feeling depressed, it was more interesting to drive round in circles". Or a doctor who prescribes a patient a combined laxative and sleeping draft and then ex-plains: "I'm feeling a bit low, I thought it would cheer me up a bit".'
She reached out to the table and put down the fake Fuaran.
'You're very strict, Mother,' I said with a shake of my head.
'That's why I'm strict – because I'm a mother,' Svetlana replied in the same tone. 'I was only joking. The books are still wonderful anyway. Only the last ones are very sad.'
'Nadiushka and your mother have gone for a walk to the river,' I said.
'Did you see them?'
'No Ksyusha said: "Your Nadia and her granny have gone for a walk . . .".'
Svetlana tittered. But then she pulled a frightened face.
'Don't tell my mother that! She'll be upset.'
'Do you think I'm tired of living?'
'Why don't you tell me how your hike went?'
'The witch got away,' I said. 'We chased her down to the fourth level of the Twilight, but she still got away.'
'The fourth?' Svetlana's eyes flashed. 'Are you serious?'
I sat down beside her – the hammock swayed indignantly and the trees creaked, but they held. I gave her a short account of our adventures.
'And I've never been to the fourth level . . .' Svetlana said thoughtfully. 'How interesting . . . The colours come back?'
'I even thought there were some smells.'
Svetlana nodded absent-mindedly:
'Yes, I've heard rumours about that . . .Very interesting.'
I kept quiet for a few seconds. And then I said:
'Svetlana, you ought to go back to the Watch.'
She didn't object as usual. She didn't say anything at all. Encouraged, I went on:
'You can't live at half-power. Sooner or later you . . .'
'Let's not talk about it, Anton. I don't want to be a Great Enchantress,' Svetlana explained with a wry grin. 'A little bit of domestic magic, that's all I need.'
The gate slammed shut – Ludmila Ivanovna had come back. I glanced quickly at her and was about to look away – then I stared at her, puzzled.
My mother-in-law was glowing. Anybody might have thought that she'd just put some uppity salesgirl in a shop firmly in her place, found a hundred roubles in the street and shaken hands with her beloved TV host Leonid Yakubovich.
She was even walking differently – with light steps, her shoulders held straight and her chin held high. She was smiling blissfully and singing in a soft voice:
We were born to make a fairy tale come true . . .
I shook my head hard to clear it. My mother-in-law smiled sweetly at us, waved her hand and in two strides she was past us and heading for the house.
'Mum!' Svetlana shouted to her, jumping up. 'Mum!'
My mother-in-law stopped and looked at her – with that same blissful smile.
'Are you feeling all right, Mum?' Svetlana asked.
'Wonderful!' Ludmila Ivanovna replied affectionately.
'Mum, where's Nadiushka?' Svetlana asked, raising her voice slightly.
'She's gone for a walk with a friend,' she answered, unmoved.
I shuddered. Svetlana exclaimed:
'What do you mean? It's evening already . . . chil
dren can't go walking on their own . . . with what friend?'
'With a friend of mine,' my mother-in-law explained, still smiling. 'Don't worry. You don't think I'm so stupid as to let our little girl go off on her own, do you?'
'What friend of yours?' Svetlana screamed. 'Mum! What's wrong with you? Who's Nadia with?'
The smile on my mother-in-law's face began slowly dissolving, giving way to an uncertain expression.
'With that . . . that . . .' She frowned. 'With Arina. My friend . . . Arina . . . my friend?'
I was too slow to catch exactly what Svetlana did – I just felt a chill tremor run over my skin as the Twilight was parted. Svetlana leaned towards her mother, who froze with her mouth open, swallowing air in small gulps.
Reading people's thoughts is pretty difficult, it's much easier to make them speak. But we can take an instant snapshot of thought information from close relatives in exactly the same way as we do between ourselves for the sake of speed.
But then, I didn't need the information anyway.
I understood everything already.
And I didn't even feel afraid – just empty. As if the entire world had frozen over and stopped dead.
'Go to bed!' Svetlana shouted at her mother. Ludmila Ivanovna turned and walked towards the house like a zombie.
Svetlana looked at me. Her expression was very calm, which made it hard for me to pull myself together. After all, a man feels a lot stronger when his woman is frightened.
'Arina just came up and blew on her. Took Nadienka by the hand and went off into the forest,' Svetlana blurted out. 'And my mother's been walking around for the past hour, the stupid fool!'
That was when I realised Svetlana was on the verge of hysterics.
I managed to pull myself together.
'What could she do against the witch?' I grabbed Svetlana by the shoulders and shook her. 'Your mother's only a human being!'
Tears welled up briefly in Svetlana's eyes and then immediately disappeared. Suddenly she gently pushed me away and said:
'Stand back, Anton, or you'll get caught . . . you can hardly stay on your feet as it is . . .'
I didn't try to argue. After my adventures with Edgar I wasn't going to be any help. There was hardly any power left in me, I had nothing left to share with Svetlana.
I stepped back and put my arms round the trunk of the stunted apple tree that had given up fruiting years ago. I closed my eyes.
The world around me shuddered.
And I felt the Twilight shift and stir.
Svetlana didn't gather power from people around her, as I would have done. She had enough of her own – obstinately neglected, unused . . . and constantly accumulating. They say that after giving birth female Others experience a colossal influx of power, but I hadn't noticed any changes in Svetlana at the time. It had all seemed to vanish; it was being hidden, saved up – as it turned out – for a rainy day.
The world was losing its colours. I realised I was falling into the Twilight, the first level: the intensity of the magic was so great that nothing even slightly magical could remain in human reality. The book Fuaran: fact or fiction fell through the rough board table and hit the ground with a thump. Three houses away clumps of blue moss, the emotional parasite that lives in the Twilight, flared up on the roof and were instantly consumed by flames.
Svetlana was enveloped in a white glow. She was moving her hands quickly, as if she were knitting with invisible yarn. A moment later, the yarn became visible, as threads as fine as gossamer streamed away from her hands and spread out, driven by a non-existent wind. A storm began raging around her, and then subsided as the thousands of glittering threads flew off into the distance in all directions.
'What?' I shouted. 'Sveta!'
I knew the spell she had just used. I could even have cast a 'snowy web' myself – maybe not so efficiently or rapidly, but still . . .
Svetlana didn't answer. She raised her hands to the sky, as if she was praying. But we don't believe in any gods, or in God. We are our own gods and our own demons.
A rainbow sphere, like an oversize soap bubble, parted from Svetlana's hands and drifted majestically up into the sky. The bubble expanded, rotating slowly on its axis. A dark red spot on the translucent rainbow film reminded me of Jupiter. When the red spot rotated to face me, I felt a cold, searing touch, like a breath of icy wind.
Svetlana had created the 'eye of the magician'. First grade again . . . but to create it immediately after the 'snowy web'!
The third spell followed with no perceptible pause, and I realised Svetlana had been holding it in readiness for a long time, for occasions precisely like this. She released a flock of ghostly matt-white birds from her hands. You could have called them doves, except that their beaks were too large and sharp, too rapacious.
I didn't know this spell at all.
Svetlana lowered her hands. And the Twilight settled back down. It came creeping back to us, touching our skin with its cautious, predatory chill.
I emerged into the ordinary world.
Followed by Svetlana.
Here nothing had changed. The open cover of the book lying on the ground hadn't even slammed shut yet.
But all the dogs in the village were yapping, howling and barking.
'Sveta, what?' I asked, dashing towards her.
She turned to me, and her eyes were clouded. Her invisible magical envoys were still dispersing. And then, as they dematerialised tens and hundreds of kilometres away from us, they sent back their final reports.
I knew what they said.
'Nothing . . .' Svetlana whispered. 'Nothing anywhere. No Nadiushka . . . no witch . . .'
Her eyes came back to life. That meant the magical cobweb had decayed, the white birds had fallen to earth and dissolved, the rainbow sphere had burst in the sky.
'Nothing anywhere,' Svetlana repeated. 'Anton . . .We need to calm down.'
'She couldn't have gone far,' I said. 'And she hasn't done anything bad to Nadya, believe me!'
'A hostage?' Svetlana asked. I read hope in her face.
'The Inquisition have the district sealed off. They have their own methods, even Arina won't get past the cordons.'
'Yes . . .' Svetlana whispered. 'I see.'
'To get away, she needs outside help,' I said, unsure whether I was trying to convince Sveta or myself. 'She's not going to get it voluntarily. So she's decided to blackmail us.'
'Will we be able to satisfy her demands?' Svetlana, taking the bull by the horns straight away, without bothering to ask if we would want to satisfy them . . . What else could we do? We'd do anything . . . if we could.
'We have to wait for the demands.'
Svetlana nodded.
'Yes . . . wait. But what for, exactly? A call?'
Immediately she flung her hand up and looked at the window of the bedroom.