Day Watch

by Сергей Лукьяненко

  Gesar frowned. Zabulon permitted himself a restrained smile.

  Svetlana Nazarova, the Light enchantress, glanced at her watch in concern. She was feeling nervous because the Light magician Anton Gorodetsky was late.

  "Might it not be more expedient to establish the reason for the absence of three individuals who were invited to attend?" Gesar asked cautiously, involuntarily adopting the judges' official style of speech. "I assure you that I am not trying to play for time at all. I am alarmed by the absence of a member of the Night Watch and one of the greatest troublemakers in these recent weeks."

  The Inquisitors exchanged glances as if they were silently taking an official decision.

  "The Inquisition has no objection," Maxim said in a dispassionate voice. "Permission is granted for the necessary magical intervention."

  The Inquisition observers' robes swayed as they moved their protective amulets. Maybe that was why they wore the robes, so that no one could see how they used the amulets and exactly what kind of amulets they had? The Inquisition has its own methods; its own laws, and its own weapons…

  An observation sphere sprang into sight in midair. Gray haze, streaked with wavy lines. Most of them disappeared, leaving only three.

  Three threads of fate that had recently crossed at a single point. One thread was faded and barely glowing at all. An Other was hurt…

  "That's Shagron," said Edgar, who had now relinquished the responsibilities of deputy chief of the Dark Ones. "That's Shagron!"

  The two other threads parted, but they were about to cross again at any moment-right outside the University building.

  A clash. Another clash between Dark Ones and Light Ones. But so far with no fatalities.

  "The Night Watch requests the Inquisition to intervene!" Gesar barked. "Maxim, Oscar, Raoul-they'll kill each other!"

  A woman stood up beside the head of the Night Watch-it was the Light Other Olga, who had only recently reacquired her abilities as an enchantress, and a very powerful one, which meant that she had lost her right to a surname, but not yet acquired the right to a Twilight name. She touched Gesar's elbow and looked at the judges inquiringly.

  Svetlana had turned pale and her face looked as if it were made out of wax.

  The Dark Ones didn't say anything. Zabulon scratched the tip of his nose thoughtfully.

  "The Tribunal forbids any intervention," one of the judges announced dryly.

  "Why?" Svetlana asked helplessly. She tried to get up out of her light wicker armchair, but she didn't have the strength. The physical strength. But Svetlana's real strength, the magical Power of an Other, began circling around her in a dense spiral.

  Just like people, when Others are angry, or in extreme situations, they are often stronger than when they're calm.

  "Why?" Svetlana's voice rang out insistently. "Everywhere this Dark One has appeared, Others or people have died. He's a killer! Are you going to allow him to carry on killing?"

  The judge remained imperturbable. "While he has been in Moscow the Dark One Vitaly Rogoza has not once violated a single stipulation of the Treaty, and he has not once exceeded the limits of permissible force to defend himself. He has nothing to answer to the Inquisition for. We have no grounds to intervene."

  "When the grounds appear, it will be too late!" Gesar said harshly.

  The Inquisitor merely shrugged.

  "He's going to take revenge for Shagron," one of the Light Ones said quietly and coughed.

  Two magicians-a Light One and a Dark One-were approaching the entrance to the Moscow University building, and as the distance between them melted away, everyone at the Tribunal felt more and more certain that only one of them would make it up into the turret. But who would it be?

  I don't know why but I got out of the car about three hundred meters away from the entrance to the university building. I could see spots of color, rays of light, and three-dimensional figures flickering above the building; I could sense that a power I didn't understand was restraining ordinary higher magic, not allowing it to be used. And I sensed that up there at the very top, just where the sharp steeple of the Moscow skyscraper began, there was a light gray cloud gradually swelling, and it reminded me of a time bomb.

  I looked around as I set off along the sidewalk. In theory I ought to have been hurrying, but I walked at a medium pace. That must have been the way I was supposed to do it.

  Just don't ask who had decided that.

  My mini-disk player was oozing out another melody. I didn't like it, so I found the skip button by touch and pressed it. What would it be this time?

  My name is an effaced hieroglyph,

  My clothes are patched by the wind…

  What I carry in my tight-clenched hands,

  No one asks, and I will not answer…

  The band Picnic and their song "Hieroglyph." That would do-a leisurely melody for someone who is already late anyway and whose only option now is to focus his mind and acquire the all-embracing, imperturbable calm of the sages of the East.

  I wondered if there were any Others among those sages? Or maybe the question should be put the other way around-were there any human beings among them?

  It would be interesting to find out…

  I managed to adjust the security guards' minds-clearly the simplest, everyday spells were permitted even during a session of the Tribunal.

  I walked across to the elevators-the vestibule was strangely deserted. Maybe subconsciously the people had sensed the presence nearby of all the most powerful Others in Moscow and were avoiding coming to this place? I pressed the button and the doors of one of the elevators opened immediately. I got out, automatically looking around to see if anyone else was hurrying for the elevator…

  And I saw Anton. He'd just walked past the security guards, who were still out of action.

  I wondered how he'd managed to catch up with me. Had he requisitioned a motorbike as well?

  I stood there, waiting. Anton looked at me, as if he were pondering some thought, and waited too.

  After a little pause, I pressed the button. The doors of the elevator closed and I went up. But not all the way to the very top right away, only about two-thirds of the way up the building. It turned out that the only way I could go higher was on a different elevator that served the upper floors. And then the only way to get where I needed to go was to follow a wide marble stairway with old blotches of whitewash on it. The stairway led to a door that was open in the Twilight but, naturally, firmly closed and locked in the ordinary world.

  Just before the stairway, Picnic's ritual performance came to an end and the player selected another song at random:

  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…

  I'd only heard snatches of this song by Nautilus Pompilius before, but now it suddenly struck an echo in my very soul. As I walked up toward the locked door and dived into the Twilight, I sang along together with Butusov.

  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…

  Any Other could have heard me and Butusov, even though the only real sound was coming from the little button earphones and faded away completely only one step away from me.

  We entered the chamber where the Tribunal was taking place together. Me and the fallen angel.

  I tried to be just and kind,

  And I wasn't frightened or surprised

  By the people gathering down on the Earth

  To watch an angel fall…<
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  Gesar. Zabulon. The Inquisitor Maxim. The Dark Ones I'd been drinking coffee with and talking to for the last few days: Edgar, Yura, Kolya, Anna Tikhonovna… The Light Ones I'd been sparring and fighting with recently, bending the rules almost to the point of breaking them: Ilya, Garik, Tolik, the shape-shifter, Bear. Others I didn't know, both Dark and Light, including some who were obviously not connected with the Watches. Two in loose robes-Inquisitors, I supposed.

  And a light enchantress with a face contorted in grief. People and Others have expressions like that when they've just lost loved ones.

  And the wind swirls into their open mouths,

  Filling them with white snow, or sweet manna,

  Or simply feathers flying down after

  The one who has fallen, like a fallen angel…

  And then I was dragged irresistibly up the transparent stairway, to the top of the mysterious pyramid I had been climbing all this time; at almost the very same moment, the two Inquisitors in robes rescinded the prohibition on higher magic. Svetlana hit me with that cloud I had seen, which had been ready to burst and explode at any moment. A field of Power that made a multi-megaton explosion seem tiny and insignificant.

  Time stopped

  And I understood everything. Everything that had happened. Everything that was happening now and everything that was destined to happen in the immediate future. I understood, and swallowed hard to keep down the lump that had suddenly risen in my cramped throat.

  I had become the most powerful magician on Earth. A magician beyond classification. A Caliph for an hour… no, only for an instant… The only one in this dilapidated round hall who had no future.

  There are some Others who have no future…

  A Mirror! I was nothing but a Mirror. The Mirror of the World. A weight cast into the dangling pan of the scales when the balance between the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness is disrupted.

  The Light had acquired a new Great Enchantress, but the Darkness had not been given an equally strong adept. The Light had been granted a chance to settle accounts with the Darkness once and for all.

  But there is no Light without Darkness. And so the Twilight had produced me. It had found a strange Other who had not yet inclined to one side or the other, an Other with a pristine, pure aura, and then colored that aura Dark. It had taken away my former memories and given me the ability to reflect and absorb others' Power. The more powerfully I was struck, the more powerful I had become, jumping up onto the next step. And when there was nowhere left to jump, that was the summit, and beyond that there was only eternity and the Twilight-the Mirror was no longer needed. Because the Mirror had itself become capable of disrupting the equilibrium.

  The Twilight was waiting for me. Eternal Twilight. I didn't know what would happen to the body of Vitaly Rogoza, who until only recently had been an Other with no destiny. I didn't know what would happen to his memory and his personality- it all happens differently every time a Mirror comes. I only knew that the one who had become aware of himself in that frozen park in Nikolaev on his way to catch a train to Moscow would disappear forever, be transformed into an incorporeal, powerless shadow, a ghostly inhabitant of the Twilight.

  Or simply into a part of the Twilight… the Twilight that is not as inert as we are all used to thinking…

  I understood all this in the brief instant before I drew in all of Svetlana's Power. She imagined that she had lost Anton Gorodetsky. And she imagined it because of a freak coincidence, because I walked into the Tribunal hall with a mini-disk player exactly like Anton's, with a copy of his disk in the player and with Anton's favorite song in my ears and my soul. I also understood that the Inquisition knew the truth. But none of the Inquisitors would say a word to reassure the Others of Moscow, who believed I'd had a skirmish with Anton and Anton had been killed.

  The Light Ones knew his favorite songs.

  "Die!"

  No, I won't die, Svetlana. Or rather, I will, but not right now. I am a Mirror. In trying to destroy me, you grow weaker, and I only grow stronger. I can already see what lies ahead of you-thirty or fifty years spent on slowly restoring all the Power you've squandered so insanely. You'll have to collect together what you've lost, crumb by crumb. For three, or maybe more, decades-long enough for the Darkness to prepare for another attempt to disrupt the equilibrium by whichever side it happens to be. You have long years ahead of you to find happiness with Anton, or not to find it.

  But in any case, throughout those years you will be equals.

  Maybe you have lost your powers, but I'm giving you a chance… a chance that I don't have.

  The music stopped. The magical blow had been too much for the player-technology reacts badly in general to powerful magic-and it shattered into shards of plastic. My cap went flying toward the door, and my jacket split in several places at once.

  I was barely able to keep my feet, but I managed it.

  "A Mirror!" Gesar exclaimed, his voice filled with an entire gamut of indescribable feelings and intonations. "The third time, and the third time for the Dark Ones!"

  "Well, we don't set up global social experiments, my dear colleague!" said Zabulon, the head of the Day Watch, making no effort to conceal his triumph. Today he was one of the victors. And the Light Ones had suffered a defeat.

  But just how many times had this already happened-or the exact opposite?

  Svetlana, drained and shattered, had been crushed by grief only a moment earlier, but now she cried out, unable to conceal her joy: "Anton!"

  He was standing by the door. Anton Gorodetsky. Light magician. Alive and unharmed. He had followed me up.

  "Thank you, Anton!" Zabulon said to him in a tone of immense satisfaction. "You carried out my assignment perfectly. I hope you're pleased with your reward?"

  "Assignment?" Gesar exclaimed. "Anton?"

  Zabulon laughed quietly as he stood up. The head of the Night Watch only gave his triumphant enemy a swift glance and then looked back at Anton.

  But Anton walked up to Svetlana, who was so happy she couldn't understand a thing, put his arms around her, whispered, "Just a moment," and moved toward me.

  For a few seconds we looked each other in the eye. Enemy to enemy. Other and non-Other. I don't even know how to put it so that it sounds right. There are always at least two truths, after all.

  "Take this," said Anton.

  And he handed me his disk player to replace the broken one.

  "Thank you," I whispered. I took the remains of mine off my belt, took out my disk without speaking, and stuck it into the player he had given me, as if that were the most important thing of all now. And I thought: Now the Inquisitor will get up and say that I can go.

  I was right, of course. Magicians of that level don't make mistakes, even if they are non-Others.

  "In the name of the Treaty," Maxim declared as dryly and dispassionately as ever, "since it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that Vitaly Rogoza is not an Other in the ordinary meaning of that word, the actions of the Night Watch relative to Vitaly Rogoza are not a matter for investigation by the Inquisition. Likewise, Vitaly Rogoza does not come under the terms of the Treaty. He is free to pursue his own destiny."

  As if I'd ever really had one. Me and the other Mirrors who had come before me, and the young boy Egor, whose time had not yet come…

  "The Inquisition has concluded its consideration of all the cases," said Maxim, glancing around at the magicians present. "Do the Watches have any comments or suggestions?"

  I pressed Play and walked away. In my tattered jacket I looked like a cross between a street bum and a weird scarecrow. But who cared?

  The disk player I'd been given was working in random mode. And yet again it picked out just what was needed from the dozens of tracks. Kipelov and Mavrin. "Troubled Times." All I had to do now was sing along.

  So I did.

  Troubled times!

  The specter of freedom on a horse.

  Blood up to your knees,


  Like in some crazy dream.

  The people amuse themselves

  Killing the Old Gods,

  The people pray,

  Waiting for Righteous Words!

  A comet in the sky,

  A sure sign of imminent disaster.

  Fallen Warriors of the Light

  Are burned on bonfires.

  Warriors of the Darkness

  Have encircled the world.

  Thousands of birds

  Tumble down like rain.

  Troubled times for the one who no longer has the right to call himself Vitaly Rogoza. For the one who rose, only to fall. For the fallen angel… the dark angel. Troubled times for you and for the Others. The end of the millennium. The time when it's impossible to tell the Light from the Darkness, or the Darkness from the Light. A time of deaths and battles. Troubled times.

  We don't know who we are-

  Children of the red star,

  Children of the black star,

  Or of the fresh graves…

  The dance of Death is simple and terrible,

  But until the hour strikes,

  The sins of all our lives

  Are punished by these troubled times!

  I don't know whose child I am either. I only know one thing: The troubled times usually punish those who have not committed any sins for the sins of others. Or if they have committed any sins, they're not the ones they're punished for. But I wasn't allowed any choice. I wasn't given any destiny.

  We're still alive.

  Some will be saved, some will not

  On a wild impulse

  They put the lights out in our fortress,

  The flag torn down

  Is the sign

  Of surrender to our enemies,

  But you will not take it,

  It's a lie-

  For now we're still alive!

  I am alive for now. And I'm singing. I'm singing, even though I know that Kipelov and Mavrin's next song contains the following lines:

  Don't ask-I won't take you with me.