Last Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  “No surrender to the enemies!” Afandi exclaimed gleefully. “Into battle!”

  At long last Nodir also entered the Twilight. I looked around at my improvised army: four weak Light Ones, two weak Dark Ones, Alisher, who had been tested on the streets of Moscow, and Afandi as ballast. Well, it could have been worse. Even if those Higher Ones who had been in Scotland were hiding somewhere around here, we could give them a fight for their money.

  “Let’s leave!” I commanded. “Alisher, you take Afandi. Valentina, Timur—you go first. Everybody erect the Magician’s Shield!”

  We left straight through the wall. On the second level of the Twilight it wouldn’t have existed at all. On the first level it did exist, and it even seemed to slow down our movements. But if you took a running start, it was possible to pass through almost any material object down here.

  And we did pass through it. Only Afandi got one leg stuck, and he jerked it about in the wall for a long time before he broke free, leaving one sneaker behind. It would stay hanging there on the first level of the Twilight, slowly fading away over a period of several months. A few particularly sensitive people would even notice it out of the corner of their eye... provided, of course, that the building survived.

  On the side we broke out through, the cordon was thinner. Five men with submachine guns were staring at the blank wall, obviously puzzled about why they had been stationed there. But two of them turned out to be charmed, and they saw us. I don’t know what we looked like—ordinary people who leaped out through the wall or spectral shadows. In any case, there was no goodwill evident in the soldiers’ faces, only fear and the readiness to shoot. Valentina did the right thing: Her spell had no visible effect, but the fail-proof Kalashnikov in one soldier’s hands refused to fire. And then Timur hurled a Fireball through the Twilight and burned off the barrel of the other soldier’s automatic rifle.

  That was a mistake!

  Sure, those two couldn’t fire anymore. But their comrades, who couldn’t locate us themselves, saw the ball of flame come flying out of nowhere—and they started firing. Either out of sheer fright or because they had been trained to do it.

  At first I thought Timur hadn’t put up a Shield. The burst of fire literally cut straight through him: I saw the bullets leave holes in his back, one after another. He fell over on his back, and then I saw that he did have a Shield after all. A weak one, only at the front, but it was there.

  The enchanted bullets had pierced straight through his magical armor. It was the very same technique as in Edinburgh!

  “Tim!” Nodir shouted, bending down over his friend.

  That was what saved him—several bursts of fire from the soldiers blazing away erratically with their automatic weapons went right over his head.

  The next moment, before I could do anything to stop him, Murat struck back.

  The members of my group didn’t have a very wide choice of spells. As provincial magicians unused to combat and not naturally very powerful, they were quite unprepared for this skirmish with human beings who could kill Others.

  Murat used some version of the White Sword that I didn’t know. In theory this spell should only kill Dark Others and people who are totally given over to evil. In practice, you have to be a monk who spends his days in prayer and self-mortification for the remorseless blow not to cause you any harm. Any trace of aggression or fear makes a man vulnerable to the blade of pure Light.

  Those young Uzbek lads in military uniform had a limitless amount of fear and aggression in them.

  The white blade cut straight through four soldiers like a sharp scythe mowing down wheat. It literally sliced them in half, with fountains of blood and other unmentionable sights. The fifth soldier dropped his automatic weapon and took to his heels, screaming wildly. Even seen from the Twilight he seemed to be moving fast, he put on such a burst of speed!

  Murat was frozen to the spot. I walked around in front of him. The white blade was still fading away in his hand and he looked very calm, almost sleepy. I looked into his eyes and found the answer to my unasked question.

  It was over. He was already withdrawing. The death of four humans was too great a burden for his Light nature to bear.

  I squatted down beside Nodir and shook him by the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  He turned his face toward me and said in a surprised voice, “They killed Timur. They shot him!”

  “I can see. Let’s go.”

  Nodir started shaking his head. “No! We can’t leave him here... .”

  “We can and we will! Our enemies won’t get their hands on the body, it will dissolve in the Twilight. We’ll all go that way sooner or later. Get up.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Get up. The Light needs you.”

  Nodir groaned, but he got up. And then his eyes fell on Murat. He shook his head again, as if he was trying to shake out the sudden overload of dark impressions. He dashed over to Murat and tried to grab hold of his arm.

  His fingers clutched nothing but air. Murat was melting away, dissolving into the Twilight. Far more quickly than Timur’s dead body would disappear. A Light Magician has to have a lot of experience in life in order to convince himself that he had the right to kill four people. I could probably have held out. Murat couldn’t.

  “Let’s go!” I ordered, giving Nodir a slap across the face. “Let’s go!”

  Somehow he managed to pull himself together and plod along behind me—away from the office, which was still being stormed, away from two comrades, one dead and one dying. Valentina walked in front, with the Dark Ones beside her. Alisher was dragging along Afandi, who had sobered up and calmed down. Nodir and I brought up the rear of the procession.

  They started firing after us again—the screams of the soldier who had survived the White Sword had attracted attention. I raised another Wall of Flame and, unable to resist, flung a small Fireball at the old Peugeot by the fence. The car flared up in a jolly blaze, adding a little French charm to the Central Asian landscape.

  The confusion that had set in made it easier for us to retreat. Moreover, in the Twilight there were gaping holes in the low fence, and the next building didn’t exist at all. We ran down the deserted street as far as the crossroads and turned onto another narrow street that led to the market. It seemed that sooner or later every street here led to the market... Nodir was sobbing and swearing by turns. Afandi kept looking back, gazing in amazement at the battle raging around the empty building. It looked as if the attackers had started firing at one another in their confusion.

  The Dark Ones were holding up better. Valentina Ilinichna was walking in the center, and they were providing perfectly competent lateral protection. I actually thought that we had already escaped pursuit. And that was an unforgivable mistake for a Higher Magician to make. Or almost unforgivable.

  After all, I had never really believed that devas existed.

  The European tradition is golems—creatures created out of clay, wood, or even metal. In Russia the wooden ones are known affectionately as pinocchios, although the last actual operational pinocchio rotted away sometime in the eighteenth century. We don’t know what their contemporaries used to call them. We were taught to create pinocchios in our classes and that was both amusing and instructive—the wooden doll that came to life could walk, perform simple work, even talk... and it crumbled into dust after only a few minutes. For a wooden golem to last even a few days, the magician has to be very powerful and very skillful, and experienced magicians don’t really have much use for dimwitted pinocchios. Bringing metal to life, making a creature of metal, is even harder. I remember that Sveta once made a walking doll out of paper clips for little Nadya, but it took exactly three steps, and then froze forever. Clay is remarkably malleable and amenable to animation; it holds the magic for a long time, but even clay golems are not made very often nowadays
.

  In the East, though, there were devas. Or rather, it was believed that there were. Essentially, they’re golems too, only without any material basis—animated clumps of the Twilight, intertwined vortices of Power. According to legend, creating such a deva (the Arabs usually called them genies) was regarded as an examination that a magician had to pass to be acknowledged as Higher Level. First you had to create the deva, then you had to subordinate it to your will. Some were eliminated at the first stage, but a far sadder fate awaited those who screwed things up at the second.

  I thought devas were creatures of legend. Or, at the very most, an extremely rare experiment that one of the greatest magicians of antiquity had managed to pull off once or twice. And even less did I imagine that devas still existed in our own times. However, the members of the local Watches seemed to believe in them.

  Only, they didn’t have the Power to spot a deva approaching.

  The young Dark One—I never did learn his name—screamed and started flailing his arms about, as if he was trying to fight off something invisible. He was lifted up off the ground and carried through the air until he stopped, shouting and squirming, from as high up as a two-story house. I shuddered as I watched the Dark One’s sides collapse as if from the pressure of a gigantic hand, and his clothes start to char. His scream became a feeble wheeze.

  And then a bloody streak appeared on the Dark One’s body in the form of an arc. A moment later the dead body fell to the ground, cut—or rather, bitten—right through.

  “Shields!” Alisher shouted.

  I didn’t increase the strength of my own Shield. In the first place, I didn’t know if it would be any use to me against the deva. And in the second, I was the only one who could stand up to the creature.

  I instantly sank down to the second level of the Twilight.

  And immediately I saw the deva.

  The flexible body woven out of plumes of fire and smoke really did resemble a mythical genie. The predominant color was gray—even the petals of flame were blackish-gray, with just the faintest hint of crimson. The deva didn’t have any legs; its torso narrowed and became a snake’s body that writhed as it moved along. The ground underneath it steamed like damp laundry under an iron. The head, the arms, and even the genitals that protruded absurdly from the serpentine half appeared completely human. But they were huge—the deva stood five or five and a half meters tall—and they were made of smoke and flame. The eyes blazed with a scarlet fire—the only bright detail on its body—or in the entire second level of the Twilight.

  The deva saw me too—just at the moment when it was reaching its hand out for Valentina. The monster howled in glee and came skidding toward me with surprising agility. What was this crazy reptile trend? A two-headed snake golem in Scotland, and now a half-snake, half-man deva in Uzbekistan.

  Just as a test, I threw a Fireball at the deva. It had absolutely no effect; the bundle of flames simply dissolved in the monster’s body. Then I tried a Triple Blade. The deva winced, but it didn’t slow down.

  All right, then...

  I allowed the Power to flow through my arm and created a White Sword. I was probably influenced by Murat’s final action, but it was a mistake to follow the Uzbek magician’s example: The white blade easily sliced through the deva’s body, but without causing it any harm. There was no time to ponder the reasons for this failure. The deva swung its arm back and struck out with its hand. I managed to jump back, but a cunning thrust with the tail caught me by surprise and I was sent tumbling across the ground. The deva advanced on me, laughing triumphantly, but I couldn’t get up. Strangely enough, I didn’t even feel afraid. All I felt was revulsion at the sight of the monster’s penis rising into an erection. The deva clutched his penis in one hand and began waggling it about, either masturbating or preparing to use it to pummel me with. What was this? Was I supposed to die of a blow from some brainless monster’s dick? I didn’t try to create another White Sword. I gathered Power into the palm of my hand and struck out at the deva with the sign of Thanatos.

  The deva flinched and scratched his chest with his free hand where the blow had landed. Thin streams of smoke curled and twisted like hairs behind his open palm. Then the deva started roaring with laughter, still clutching his male member, which had grown to the size of a baseball bat by this point. The deva radiated heat—not living warmth, but hot air, the same as a blazing bonfire gives off.

  He wasn’t so brainless after all. I was far more stupid, striking with the sign of death at a being that wasn’t even alive.

  “Ai, you Satan, you mangy dog, vicious offspring of a sick tapeworm!” I heard someone shout from behind the deva. Old man Afandi had somehow managed to enter the second level of the Twilight! And not only that—he had taken a firm grip of the deva’s tail and was trying to drag it away from me!

  The monster turned around slowly, as if it couldn’t believe that anyone would dare to treat it with such contempt. It stopped scratching and raised its massive hand above the old man’s head in a clenched fist. It would drive him into the ground up to his ears!

  I frantically sifted through the clutter that had accumulated in my head. Everything to do with golems, from the first classes to the tall tales I’d heard from Semyon. The deva was just another golem. Golems could be destroyed! Golem... golems... cabbalistic golems, golems with goals and free will, golems for fun and amusement, wooden golems... the impossibility of creating a plastic golem... Olga had once told me... a skill that no one needed anymore... the spell wasn’t that difficult in principle, but it took a lot of Power... .

  “Dust and Ashes,” I shouted, throwing out one hand toward the deva.

  Now everything depended on whether I’d made the sign correctly. The standard position widely used in magical passes, with the thumb gripped between the next two fingers, but with the little finger extended forward, parallel to the thumb. That month of training in stretching our fingers had certainly been well spent. We would be the envy of any pianist... .

  The monster froze and then slowly turned around to face me. The red light in its eyes went out and the deva began whining shrilly like a puppy dog whose paw has been stepped on. The deva opened its hand and the penis fell off and shattered in a heap of sparks, like a firebrand that has flown out of a bonfire. Then the fingers on its hands started crumbling away. The deva had stopped whining now; it was sobbing, reaching its fingerless hands out toward me and shaking its head with the blind eyes.

  That was how the great magicians of the East used to subdue them... .

  I held the position with the sign of Dust and Ashes, allowing the Power to flow through me, on and on, for about three minutes in second-level Twilight time, until the deva was finally reduced to a handful of ash.

  “Cold, isn’t it?” said Afandi, hopping up and down. He walked up to the remains of the deva, held out his hands, and rubbed them together as he warmed them. Then he spat on the ash and muttered, “Ugh, you son of evil and father of abomination...”

  “Thank you, Afandi,” I said as I got up off the frosty ground. It really was terribly cold on the second level. At least by some miracle I’d managed not to lose the bag with my things—it was still hanging on my shoulder. Although... perhaps the miracle in question was an affinity spell cast on the bag by Svetlana? “Thank you, Granddad. Let’s get you out of this place. It’s hard for you to stay down here for very long.”

  “Ai, thanks, O mighty warrior,” said Afandi, beaming. “You thanked me? I shall take pride in that for the rest of my pointless life! The vanquisher of a deva has praised me!”

  I took him by the elbow without saying a word and dragged him up to the first level. I’d put so much Power into destroying the deva that even I was finding it hard to stay in the Twilight.

  .

  .

  A COMMON ENEMY

  Chapter 4

  The c
haikhana , or tea house, was gloomy and dirty. fat blue-bottles buzzed as they circled around the weak lightbulbs in fly-spotted shades hanging from the ceiling. We were sitting on greasy, bright-colored cushions around a low table, only about fifteen centimeters high. The table was covered with a brightly patterned tablecloth, and it was dirty too.

  In Russia a café like this would have been closed down in a moment. In Europe they would have put the owner in prison. In the USA the proprietor would have been hit with an absolutely massive fine. And in Japan the boss of an establishment like this would have committed seppuku out of a sense of shame.

  But never before had I come across smells as delicious as those in this little chaikhana that was absolutely unfit for tourists.

  Once we got away from our pursuers, we had split up. The Dark One had gone to find his colleagues and report on what had happened. Valentina Ilinichna and Nodir had set out to gather the Light Ones who were reserve members of the Watch and to call Tashkent and request reinforcements. Alisher, Afandi, and I had caught a taxi and made our way to this chaikhana beside a small market on the outskirts of Samarkand. I had already begun to suspect that there were at least a dozen markets in Samarkand, and certainly more than all the museums and movie theaters taken together.

  On the way I cast a masking spell on myself and became Timur’s double. For some reason young magicians think it’s a bad omen to assume the appearance of a dead man. There are all sorts of beliefs attached to this superstition, from “you’ll die soon” to “you’ll pick up someone else’s habits.” Anybody would think that habits were fleas that scatter after their host dies and look for someone who resembled him as closely as possible... I have never been superstitious, so I didn’t hesitate to adopt Timur’s appearance. I had to disguise myself as a local in any case. Even in this chaikhana a visitor with a European appearance would have looked as much out of place as a Papuan at the haymaking in a Russian village.