"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-you 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-the chief isn't here, and second-we'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-the 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-I 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-so 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- 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-a case?-out 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-thirty 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-stretching 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-they were just Others-but 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-Dark Power. I hadn't really enjoyed using the Light Ones' Power-it 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.
&n
bsp; "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-he 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-the Dark Ones-had 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-ear of the fish-as 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-everyone 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-for 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 Tverskaya 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-a Phillips boom box-was 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-toward 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-it 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-not the squabbles of ordinary human beings, or even the eternal altercations between the Watches-could shake its calm grandeur.
Day Watch Page 25
