'Don't be in such a hurry . . .' the witch chanted in a sing-song voice. In the silence of the second level her words were like thunder – and my legs betrayed me. I slumped to my knees just a step away from Arina and Nadiushka.
'Don't touch her!' I shouted.
'Didn't I ask you,' the witch said in a quiet voice, 'to help me get away? What's one old witch more or less to you?'
'I don't trust you!'
Arina nodded wearily:
'You're right not to trust me . . . And now what am I to do, sorcerer?'
Her hand slid across her skirt and tore a sprig of dried berries from her belt. She tossed them into the blazing white lights, black smoke billowed up and the marker for the portal disappeared.
Svetlana was too late.
'You leave me no choice, Light One,' Arina said with a grim expression. 'Do you understand? I'll have to kill you, and then your daughter's no use to me any more. What were you thinking of, with your second grade?'
At that instant a glittering white sword-blade struck Arina from behind, protruded for an instant from her chest, then drew back in obedience to some invisible hand.
'A-a-a-agh . . .' the witch groaned, slumping forward.
Then the grey gloom parted to let Svetlana through.
The witch seemed to have recovered from the blow already. She retreated, jigging backwards and keeping her eyes fixed on Svetlana. The slit that had been burned through her dress was smoking, but she wasn't bleeding. And the look on her face seemed more like admiration than hatred.
'My, my . . . Great One . . .' Arina cackled. 'Did I miscalculate then?'
Svetlana didn't answer. I could never have imagined such intense hatred in her face – any man would have died just looking into her eyes. She was clutching a white sword in her right hand, and the fingers of her left were working the air, as if she was assembling an invisible Rubik's cube.
The Twilight turned a little darker. A rainbow sphere sprang up around Nadiushka. Svetlana's next pass was for me – my body recovered the power of movement. I jumped up and started circling behind the witch. I was only a bit player in this war.
'Which level did you come from, you fidget?' the witch asked almost amiably. 'Could it really be the fourth? I was keeping an eye on the third . . .'
I sensed that the answer was incredibly important to her.
'From the fifth,' Svetlana replied.
'That's really bad . . .' the witch muttered. 'That's a mother's fury for you . . .' She squinted at me out of the corner of her eye, then fixed her gaze on Svetlana again. 'Don't you go gossiping about what you saw down there . . .'
'I don't need you to tell me,' Svetlana said.
The witch nodded and began working her hands very rapidly, tearing out her hair. I didn't know if Svetlana was expecting this, but I decided it would be a good idea to jump back. It was a good thing I did – a black blizzard sprang up and began swirling round the witch, as if every hair had been transformed into a slim, sharp blade of black steel. The witch began advancing on Svetlana, who tossed her white sword at her – the blades sliced it to pieces and extinguished it, but then a transparent shield appeared, floating in the air in front of Svetlana.
I thought it must be 'Luzhin's Shield'.
The blades shattered against it almost instantly, without a sound.
'Oh, Lord . . .' Arina wailed. It was strange, but I didn't have the slightest doubt that she was sincere. Yet at the same time she was playing to her audience.
In other words, to me.
'Surrender, you wretch!' said Svetlana. 'While I'll still let you, surrender!'
'But how about . . . how about this?' Arina declared. 'Eh?'
This time she didn't reach for her amulets. She just started crooning her clumsy doggerel:
Dust to dust collect and bind,
Arms and legs with power filling,
Be my trusty servants willing.
Or you'll be scattered to the wind.
I'd been expecting anything at all from Arina. Except this. Genuine necromancers are very rare, even among the Dark Ones.
The dead were slowly rising out of the earth.
The German soldiers of the Second World War were going back into battle.
Four skeletons dressed in tatters – all their flesh had disappeared long ago and there was earth packed between their bones – stood in a ring round Arina. Another came staggering blindly towards me, clumsily waving its fingerless hands – the bones had rotted clean away. The ludicrous zombie shed pieces of itself at every step. Three equally wretched monsters started towards Svetlana. One of them was even holding a black sub-machine gun that had lost its magazine.
'Think you can raise the Red Army?' Arina taunted Svetlana.
She shouldn't have done that – Svetlana froze as if she had turned to stone. Then she hissed through her teeth:
'My grandfather fought in the war. Was this supposed to frighten me?'
I didn't understand what she did next. I would have used the 'grey prayer', but she used something from the higher levels of magic beyond my reach. The zombies crumbled to dust.
Svetlana and Arina were left staring at each other in silence.
The joking was over.
The enchantress and the witch clashed in a straightforward duel of Power.
I took advantage of the brief pause to gather my own strength. If Svetlana faltered, then I would strike.
But it was Arina who faltered.
First of all, her dress was torn off. That might have had a demoralising effect – on a man.
Then the witch began ageing rapidly. Her luxuriant black hair shrank to a pitiful grey tuft. Her breasts drooped and stretched, her arms and legs withered. She was like a monster from a children's story.
And there were no special effects here.
'Your name!' Svetlana shouted.
Arina didn't hesitate for long.
Her toothless mouth quivered and she mumbled:
'Arina . . . I am in your power, sorceress . . .'
It was only then that Svetlana relaxed – and suddenly seemed to wilt. I walked round the subdued Arina and took hold of my wife's arm.
'It's all right . . . I'm okay,' Svetlana said with a smile. 'We did it.'
The old crone – it was impossible to think of her as Arina – gazed at us sadly.
'Will you allow her to assume her former shape?' I asked.
'Why, was she more attractive then?' said Svetlana, attempting to joke.
'She'll die of old age in a moment,' I said. 'She's over two hundred years old.'
'Let her croak . . .' Svetlana muttered. She glowered at Arina. 'Witch! I grant you the right to become younger!'
Arina's body rapidly straightened up and filled with life. The witch gulped at the air greedily. She looked at me:
'Thank you, sorcerer . . .'
'Let's get out of here,' Svetlana ordered. 'And no stupid tricks . . . I grant you only the right to leave the Twilight!'
Now all the witch's power that had not been stripped away with her clothes and amulets was completely under Svetlana's control. To coin a phrase, Svetlana had her finger on the trigger.
'Sorcerer . . .' said Arina, keeping her eyes fixed on me. 'First remove the shield from your daughter. There is a grenade with the pin drawn lying under her feet. It will explode at any moment.'
Svetlana cried out.
I dashed to the rainbow globe and struck it, breaking through the Sphere of Negation. Beneath it there were another two shields. I tore them away crudely, working with raw energy. From the second level of the Twilight I couldn't see anything.
I found my shadow and shot back up to the first level. Everything was clear there, not a trace of the blue moss – the raging battle had burned it away completely.
And almost immediately I saw the old 'pineapple' lying under Nadiushka's foot. Arina had left it there as she plunged into the Twilight. Her insurance policy . . .
The pin was pulled out. Somewhere inside the gre
nade the fuse was burning away agonisingly slowly, and in the human world three or four seconds had already elapsed . . .
The casualty range was two hundred metres.
If it exploded inside the shields, there would be nothing left of Nadiushka but a bloody pulp . . .
I picked up the grenade. It's very difficult to work with objects of the real world when you are in the Twilight. At least the grenade had a distinct Twilight double – the same ribs and ridges, smeared with mud and rust . . .
Should I throw it away?
No.
In the human world it wouldn't go far. And if I took it into the Twilight, it would explode instantly.
I couldn't think of anything better to do than slice the grenade in half, as if I was trying to stone an avocado. Then I sliced it again into several pieces, searching for the small, glowing string of the slow fuse among the metal and explosive. My phantom knife, a blade of pure Power, chopped through the grenade like a ripe tomato.
Finally I found it – a tiny little spark already creeping close to the detonator. I extinguished it with my fingers.
And then I tumbled out into the human world. Soaked in sweat, my legs trembling so badly that I was barely able to stand. I shook my hand – the burnt fingers were stinging.
'Just give a man a chance to tinker with anything mechanical,' Arina said scathingly when she appeared after me. I ought to have shut her inside the shield and let her be blown to pieces. Or I could have cast a frost on her and left her frozen solid until the next day . . .
'Daddy, teach me how to hide like that,' said Nadiushka, none the worse for her adventure. Then she spotted Arina and said indignantly:' Aunty, don't be silly! You can't walk around with no clothes on!'
'How many times have I told you not to talk to grown-ups like that!' Svetlana exclaimed. Then she grabbed hold of Nadiushka's hands and started kissing her.
A scene from a madhouse . . .
If my mother-in-law had been there, she'd have had a few things to say . . .
I sat down on the edge of the trench, longing for a smoke. And I wanted a drink. And something to eat. And a sleep. But at the very least, a smoke.
'I won't do it again,' Nadya babbled 'Look, wolfie's poorly!'
It was only then that I remembered about the werewolves, and looked round.
The wolf was lying on the ground, his paws twitching feebly.
'I'm sorry, sorcerer,' said Arina. 'I threw your death spell at the wolf. There was no time to think.'
I looked at Svetlana. 'Thanatos' doesn't necessarily mean certain death. The spell can be removed.
'I'm drained . . .' Svetlana said in a low voice. 'I've no strength left.'
'I'll save the filthy creature if you like,' Arina suggested. 'It's not hard for me to do.'
We looked at each other.
'Why did you tell us about the grenade?' I asked.
'What good will it do me if she dies?' Arina replied indifferently.
'She'll be a Great Light One,' said Svetlana. 'The Greatest of all!'
'Well, let her.' Arina smiled. 'Maybe she'll remember her Aunty Arina, who told her about herbs and flowers . . . Don't worry. No one will ever make her into a Dark One. She's no simple child, the magic in her is too strong . . .What shall I do with the wolf?'
'Save him,' Svetlana said simply.
Arina nodded. Then suddenly she said to me:
'There's a bag over there in the trench . . . with cigarettes and food. I prepared this hideaway a long time ago.'
The witch worked on Igor for about ten minutes. First she drove away the growling cubs, who ran off to one side and tried to change back into children, and when they couldn't they lay down in the bushes. Then she started whispering something, all the while plucking first one plant, then another. She shouted at the cubs and they ran off and came back with twigs and roots in their teeth.
Svetlana and I looked at each other but said nothing. Everything was perfectly clear anyway. I finished my second cigarette, rolled a third between my hands to soften it and took a block of chocolate out of the black fabric bag. Apart from cigarettes, chocolate and a wad of sterling – what a prudent witch! – the bag was empty.
Somehow I'd been hoping to find the Fuaran.
'Witch!' Svetlana shouted when the werewolf got to his feet, still trembling. 'Come here!'
Arina came back to us, swinging her hips daintily and not even slightly embarrassed at being naked. The werewolf also lay down close to us. He was breathing heavily, and the cubs crowded round and started licking him. Svetlana winced at the sight, then turned to look at Arina.
'What are you accused of ?'
'On the instructions of an unidentified Light One I modified the recipe for a potion and so ruined a joint experiment by the Inquisition, the Night Watch and the Day Watch.'
'Did you do it?'
'Yes,' Arina admitted blithely.
'What for?'
'Ever since the revolution I'd been dreaming of doing real damage to the reds.'
'Don't lie,' said Svetlana, frowning. 'You couldn't give a damn for the reds or the whites. Why did you take the risk?'
'What difference does that make, sorceress?' Arina sighed.
'A big one. In the first place, for you.'
The witch threw her head back and looked up at me, then at Svetlana. Her eyelids were trembling.
'Aunty Arina, are you feeling sad?' Nadiushka asked. Then she glanced sideways at her mother and put her hands over her own mouth.
'Yes,' the witch replied.
At that moment I really didn't want Arina to fall into the clutches of the Inquisition.
'The experiment was supported by all the Others,' Arina said. 'The Dark Ones believed that the appearance of thousands of convinced communists in the leadership of the country – the bread plant's output mostly went to the Kremlin and the People's Commissariats – wouldn't improve anything. On the contrary, it would provoke hostility towards the Soviets from the rest of the world. But the Light Ones believed that after a hard but victorious war against Germany – the likelihood of that was evident to the clairvoyants by then – the Soviet Union could become a genuinely attractive society. There was a secret report . . . essentially people would have built communism by 1980 . . .'
'And made maize the basic animal-feed crop,' Svetlana snorted.
'Don't talk drivel, sorceress,' the witch retorted calmly. 'I don't remember about any maize, but they were supposed to build a city on the moon in the 1970s. And fly to Mars, and something else. The whole of Europe would have been communist. And not under constraint either. By now here on earth we'd have had a huge Soviet Union, a huge United States . . . I think Britain, Canada and Australia were part of it . . . China was left on its own.'
'So the Light Ones miscalculated?' I asked.