The Last Watch (16 page)

‘Anton, don't be in such a hurry,' Semyon said reasonably. He explained apologetically to Foma: ‘Please don't be angry, Mr Lermont! Anton is still young and hot-headed. Yesterday he thought that Kostya was dead. Now all of a sudden he's changed his mind. But what we have to worry about is something else. What do you think, Mr Lermont? Has the villain of the piece already found Merlin's hiding place?'

‘Merlin was a magician of the old school,' Lermont answered after a moment's thought. ‘A key has to have three elements. Three is a magic number, a number of Power. Three, seven and eleven.'

‘Yes, prime numbers,' Semyon agreed, ‘That's clear enough. But what about the third part of the key?'

‘I discovered the second part by accident,' Lermont said. ‘I don't know anything about the third. I can only assume that it must exist. I don't even know what it is – an object, an incantation, a sacrifice, a time of day. Perhaps you have to enter the Twilight naked on the night of the full moon, holding a thistle flower between your teeth. Merlin was a great joker.'

We said nothing for a while. Then Lermont gave a forced smile.

‘All right, my friends. I have revealed all the secrets that I had. I can't see any point in panicking ahead of time. Merlin's hiding place will surrender its secret to a Higher Other of immense power who spills someone else's blood in the Dungeons and gets his hands on the third part of the key. But what that third part is, no one knows. Let's all calm down, go inside and have a cup of tea.'

‘The English tradition of tea-drinking!' Semyon said respectfully.

Foma gave him a mocking glance and corrected him.

‘Not English. Don't forget that you're in Scotland now. You are welcome guests in my home—'

‘I have just one more question,' I said, interrupting Lermont. ‘Why did you invite Egor to Edinburgh?'

‘You mean the young illusionist?' Lermont asked, with a sigh. ‘I decided to take out an insurance policy. If there's a serious conflict, then the first to suffer will be our Night Watch. I don't have that many battle magicians. A Mirror is the best thing that can be used to oppose—'

‘Oppose whom?' I asked, when Lermont broke off in mid-phrase

The distant forefather of the Russian poet Lermontov gave me a look of annoyance so intense that I felt the full force of the same hot temper that brought a premature end to the Russian poet's life.

‘Merlin! Now are you satisfied?'

‘You believe that he …'

‘The one thing that Merlin always valued above all others was himself. And he could have given the name of the Crown of All Things to the means for bringing him back from oblivion. It would be his kind of joke.'

‘Nothing of the sort has ever happened,' said Semyon, shaking his head.

‘No, it hasn't. But there have never been any other magicians like Merlin. His essence — his soul, if you like — could be slumbering somewhere down there, on the seventh level … until a sufficiently powerful magician can reach it. To put it crudely, until a stupid body arrives to provide Merlin's black soul with a new receptacle! Would you be glad to see the Great Merlin back in the world? I certainly wouldn't! And that's the reason I need a potential Mirror Magician close at hand. Perhaps that might do the trick. He might possibly become a Mirror and destroy Merlin. What don't you like about that, Gorodetsky?'

‘But you can't do that!' I exclaimed with a feeling of anguish that surprised even me. Everything was muddled together in my
head
– Kostya, whom I had killed and who might still be alive; the Dark Magician Merlin, thirsting for resurrection, the totally unsuspecting Egor … ‘Ever since he was a child we've exploited him for our operations! And now are we going to throw him into hell, use the lad to protect ourselves against Merlin? He's nothing but a boy!'

‘All right!' said Lermont, also raising his voice. ‘You've advanced a convincing argument! Now let me lay out in front of you the personal files of all the potential Mirror Magicians. Will you point the finger? Choose a different candidate? There's a girl of nine, a boy of fifteen, a young husband and father, a pregnant woman … they never live to old age in an indeterminate state, sooner or later they choose the Light or the Dark! They're all young, all of them almost children! Will you take the choice on yourself and relieve me of this appalling responsibility?'

‘Yes!' I shouted, leaping to my feet. ‘Yes, I will! I'll relieve you. Bring out your files, Mr Foma Lermont!'

‘I'll bring them this very moment!' he said, also getting to his feet. ‘You choose, you choose!'

We stood there, glaring angrily at each other, and it was a while before we realised that both of us had tears running down our faces.

¹
This story is told in the second part of the book
The Twilight Watch
.

²
Kirill Komarov, ‘This is how the sound is born'.

³
This story is told in the third part of the book
The Twilight Watch
.

CHAPTER 6

I DON'T KNOW
if Lermont really would have brought the files or not. And I have even less idea what I would have done if he had. Probably I would have chosen a different candidate for the role of the Mirror Magician.

But we weren't given a chance to do any of that.

First I noticed Lermontov's face change. He was looking away from me, in the direction of the road.

Then I heard the roar of an engine and turned round.

A little white van hurtling along the road suddenly turned and broke easily though the symbolic wooden fence surrounding Lermont's cottage. It braked to a halt with a wild squeal, throwing up earth and gravel from under its wheels.

The rear doors of the van had been removed earlier. Two men jumped out of it and a third, left inside, opened fire from a machine gun mounted on a swivel.

The first to react was Foma. He had put up a shield as soon as the van came flying into his garden. Or maybe he hadn't put it up? Perhaps it was just a guard spell that had been installed a long time ago in order to deal with this kind of invasion?

The machine gun roared and rattled, the sound resonating in
the
back of the van and reaching us as if it had been amplified by a huge tin megaphone. The sound was accompanied by a stream of lead. But the bullets didn't reach their target. They halted gently, hung in the air for a second like some special effect in an action movie, and then fell to the ground.

The two who had jumped out, both masked in black hoods, dropped to the ground and opened fire with sub-machine guns. As yet, no one had got out of the front of the van.

Were they idiots, or what?

Semyon waved his hands a few times. I noticed the harmless Morpheus, which would give the attackers about ten seconds to carry on playing at soldiers, and the instantly acting Opium. But the spells didn't work and the firing continued, with the bullets getting stuck in mid-air halfway between us. I looked closely – no, they weren't Others. Just ordinary people. But each of them had the gentle glow of a protective amulet on his chest.

‘Just don't kill them!' Lermont cried out when I raised my hand.

I only had two Triple Blades ready and waiting for instant action – I hadn't been expecting to wind up in a shoot-out like this. I flung both, aiming at the large machine gun. The first charge missed, but the second struck home, reducing the weapon to a heap of shredded metal. The racket quietened down a bit – now only the men with sub-machine guns were firing, but rather uncertainly, as if they had just discovered the invisible barrier. That was good. Every defence has its limit of saturation and the machine-gun fire would have put it out of action fairly quickly.

We had been attacked by men! Ordinary men, equipped with protective amulets. An act that was not only absolutely unheard of but also stupid. It's one thing to shoot a magician from ambush, using a remote-controlled weapon. But like this, face-to-face, three gunmen against three magicians … what were they hoping to achieve?

Simply to distract our attention!

I swung round just in time to see the white smoke trail heading in our direction. The rocket had been launched from the roof of a high-rise building standing almost a kilometre away. But it was clearly controllable, and it was coming straight for the arbour.

‘Foma!' I shouted, throwing a Freeze in the direction of the rocket on the off chance. But the temporal stasis spell either missed its target, or the rocket had also been protected against magic – nothing happened.

‘Into the Twilight!' Lermont shouted.

Sometimes it's better to do as you're told than to think up your own original moves. I stepped into the Twilight, sinking down to the second level almost immediately. Lermont was there beside me – he too considered the first level an insufficiently secure defence. But to my surprise, he didn't stop on the second level – he waved his hand and went down deeper. Perplexed, I followed him down to the third level. What need was there for this? A powerful explosion in the real world might be felt on the first level, but it wouldn't reach the second … and if Foma suspected the unthinkable, the most terrible thing possible, then a nuclear blast scorched through the material of all levels of the Twilight …

The grey gloom was lit up by a white flame. The ground under our feet trembled slightly. Only slightly – but it trembled!

‘Where's Semyon?' I shouted.

Lermont merely shrugged. We waited a few more seconds for the splinters to stop flying, the flame to die away and the smoking fragments of the arbour to stop falling in the real world.

And then we went back out.

Lermont's neat and tidy cottage had lost all the glass in its windows and was covered with a fine sprinkling of debris. A hefty branch torn off the nearest tree by the explosion was protruding from a window on the second floor.

The small van was lying where it had been tossed on to its side. There were two motionless bodies beside it. A third man, the machine-gunner or perhaps the driver, who had prudently stayed put in his cabin, was slowly crawling away towards the fence, dragging his useless legs behind him.

I didn't feel any particular pity for him. He was an ordinary bandit who had been used to distract our attention from the rocket attack. He'd known what he was getting into.

Where the arbour had stood there was a small crater, strewn with white scraps of wood. The playing cards were soaring and circling above our heads – a capricious chance had tossed them up into the air instead of incinerating them.

We found Semyon right beside the van. He was inside a transparent glowing sphere that looked as if it had been carved in crystal. The sphere was slowly rolling along and Semyon, with his arms and legs held out, was turning over and over with it. His pose was such a hilarious parody of the picture
The Golden Section
that I giggled stupidly. Squat and short-legged, Semyon looked nothing like the muscular athlete drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.

‘A very uncomfortable spell,' Lermont said in relief. ‘But then, it is reliable.'

The crystal sphere cracked all over and disintegrated in a cloud of steam. Semyon, who was upside down at that moment, nimbly swung round and landed on his feet. He stuck a finger in his ear and asked:

‘Do they always do that round here on Saturdays, Mr Lermont? Or is it just in honour of our arrival?'

Lermont took no notice of this simple piece of wit. He inclined his head to one side, as if he were listening to someone's voice, and frowned. And his frown became deeper and deeper.

Then, with just a couple of gestures, he created the glowing frame of a portal in front of himself, and said:

‘Follow me, gentlemen. I am afraid all this was merely a diversion.'

I didn't get time to ask what he intended to do about the overturned van, the demolished arbour and the crawling bandit who was already out in the street, where the neighbours could see him. A second portal opened beside the first, and Others began jumping out of it, one after another.

They weren't simply Light Ones from the Night Watch – they were dressed in police uniforms, with bulletproof vests and helmets, and they were holding their machine pistols at the ready!

Well now, Thomas the Rhymer, aren't you a fine one for the blather! We have underestimated technology! I can see just how badly you underestimate it …

Lermont stepped into the first portal. I hung back for a moment, waiting for Semyon, but he suddenly stopped, with his stare fixed on a gaunt man with red hair.

‘Kevin! You old fogey!'

‘Simon, you old blockhead!' the redhead shouted in delight. ‘Where are you going? Hang on!'

They put their arms round each other and started hammering each other on the back with all the enthusiasm of those crazy rabbits in the advert for electric batteries.

‘Later, we'll catch up on everything later,' Semyon muttered, freeing himself from Kevin's embraces. ‘Look, the portal's getting cold. I brought you some wine from Sebastopol – remember it? Sparkling muscat, here!'

I spat and shook my head. What sort of thing was that to say – ‘later, later …' In the movies any character who said that to an old friend was irrevocably doomed to die soon.

I could only be glad that we weren't characters in an action movie.

I stepped in through the frame of the portal.

A dense white glow all around. A feeling of lightness that could only be compared with what cosmonauts experience. Mysterious paths inaccessible to human beings.

What were those others in police uniforms going to do there? Wipe clean the memories of any chance witnesses, remove all traces of the explosion, interrogate the attackers if they survived? The basic day-to-day routine work of the Watches.

But who had dared to do it? Attacking a member of a Watch was already an act of insanity. But to attack the head of a Watch, plus two foreign magicians, was absolutely unheard-of. And to use human beings to do it …