The Last Watch (29 page)

‘Are you saying it's a Higher Light One from our Watch? A Healer? Working for the enemy?'

‘That could be it!' Alisher said obstinately.

‘There has only ever been one Higher-level Light Healer in our Watch,' I reminded him calmly. ‘And she's my wife.'

Alisher stopped short and shook his head.

‘I beg your pardon, Anton! I didn't mean anything of the kind!'

‘Ai, that's enough quarrelling!' Afandi said in his foolish old voice. ‘The
shurpa
's gone cold! And there's nothing worse than cold
shurpa
. Apart from hot vodka!'

He looked around stealthily and passed his hands over the bowls of
shurpa
. The cold broth started steaming again

‘Afandi, how can we talk to Rustam?' I asked again.

‘Eat your
shurpa
,' the old man muttered. And he showed us how.

I broke off a piece of a bread cake and started on my broth. What else could I do? The East is the East, they don't like to give a straight answer here. The best diplomats in the world come from the East. They don't say ‘yes' or ‘no', but that doesn't mean they abstain …

It was only after Alisher and I had finished our
shurpa
that Afandi sighed and said:

‘Gesar was probably right. He probably can demand an answer from Rustam. One answer to one question.'

Well, at least that was one small victory!

‘Coming right up,' I said, nodding. Of course, the question had to be formulated correctly, to exclude any possibility of an ambiguous answer. ‘Just a minute …'

‘Why are you in such a hurry?' Afandi asked in surprise. ‘A minute, an hour, a day … Think.'

‘In principle, I'm ready,' I said.

‘So what? Who are you going to ask, Anton Gorodetsky?' Afandi laughed. ‘Rustam's not here. We'll go to see him, and then you can ask your question.'

‘Rustam's not here?' I asked, struck almost dumb.

‘No,' Afandi replied firmly. ‘I'm sorry if anything I said might have misled you. But we'll have to go to the Plateau of the Demons.'

I thought I was beginning to understand how Gesar could have quarrelled with Rustam. And I thought that Merlin, for all his evil deeds, must have been a very kind soul and an extremely patient Other. Because Afandi was Rustam. No crystal ball was needed to see that!

‘I'll just be a moment …' Afandi got up and went towards a small door in the corner of the
chaikhana
that had the outline of a male figure stencilled on it. It was interesting that there wasn't any door with a female silhouette. Apparently the women of Samarkand were not in the habit of spending time in
chaikhanas
.

‘Well, this Rustam's a real character,' I muttered while he was gone. ‘As stubborn as a mule.'

‘Anton, Afandi's not Rustam,' Alisher said.

‘You mean you believe him?'

‘Anton, ten years ago my father recognised Rustam. At the time I didn't think anything of it – the ancient Higher One was still alive, so what? Many of them have withdrawn from the active struggle and live unobtrusive lives among ordinary people …'

‘So?'

‘My father knew Afandi. He must have known him for fifty years.' I thought about that.

‘But what exactly did your father say to you about Rustam?'

Alisher wrinkled up his forehead. Then, speaking very precisely, as if he was reading from the page of a book, he said:

‘Today I saw a Great One, whom no one has met anywhere for seventy years. The Great Rustam, Gesar's friend, and then his enemy. I walked past him. We recognised each other, but pretended that we hadn't seen anything. It is good that an Other as insignificant as I has never quarrelled with him.'

‘But what of it?' I asked – it was my turn to argue now. ‘Your father could finally have recognised Rustam, disguised as Afandi. That's the point.'

Alisher thought about that and admitted that yes, it could have happened like that. But he still thought his father hadn't meant Afandi.

‘But anyway, that doesn't get us anywhere,' I said, gesturing impatiently. ‘You can see how obstinate he is. We'll have to go to the Plateau of the Demons with him … By the way, what is that? Only don't tell me that in the East there are demons who live on some plateau!'

Alisher laughed.

‘Demons are the Twilight forms of Dark Magicians whose human nature has been distorted by Power, the Twilight and the Dark. They teach us that in one of our very first lessons. No, the Plateau of the Demons is a human name. It's a mountainous area where there are boulders that have fantastic shapes – just like petrified demons. People don't like to go there. That is, only the tourists go …'

‘Tourists aren't people,' I agreed. ‘So it's just common or garden superstition?'

‘No, it's not all superstition,' Alisher said in a more serious voice. ‘There was a battle there. A big battle between Dark Ones and Light Ones, almost two thousand years ago. There were more Dark Ones, they were winning … and then the Great White Magician
Rustam
used a terrible spell. Nobody has ever used the White Haze in battle again since then. The Dark Ones were turned to stone. And they didn't dissolve into the Twilight, but tumbled out into the ordinary world, just as they were – stone demons. What people say is true, only they don't realise it.'

I felt my heart suddenly seared by a cold, clammy, repulsive memory. I was standing facing Kostya Saushkin. And from far away Gesar's voice was whispering in my head …
¹

‘The White Mist,' I said. ‘The spell is called ‘the White Mist'. Only Higher Magicians can work it: it requires total concentration and the bleeding of all Power from within a radius of three kilometres …'

It was as if Alisher's words had broken open some lock in my memory. And the door of a closet had creaked open to reveal an ancient skeleton, with its teeth bared in a bony grin …

Gesar had not simply given me bare knowledge. He had transferred an entire piece of his memory. A generous gift.

… The stone burns your feet through the soft leather shoes, because the stone is red-hot, and even the spells applied to your clothes lose their effect. And up ahead someone's body is smoking, half sunk into the softened stone. Not all of our comrades' charms have withstood the Hammer of Fate.

‘Gesar!' a broad-shouldered man shouts in my ear. His short black beard has turned frizzy in the heat, his red-and-white clothes are dusted with black ash. Lacy black-and-grey flakes are falling on us from above, crumbling into dust as they fall. ‘Gesar, we have to decide!'

I say nothing. I look at the smoking body and try to recognise who it is. But then his defence finally collapses, and the body
explodes
into a column of greasy ashes that shoots up into the sky. The streams of dispersing Power waft the ashes about and for a moment they assume the spectral form of a human figure. I realise what it is that is falling on us, and a lump rises in my throat.

‘Gesar, they're trying to raise the Shade of the Rulers.' The voice of the magician dressed in red and white is full of panic and horror. ‘Gesar!'

‘I'm ready, Rustam,' I say. I reach out my hand to him. Magicians do not often work spells in pairs, but we have been through a lot together. And it's easier for two to do it. Easier to take the decision. Because there are hundreds of Dark Ones and tens of thousands of men in front of us.

And behind us there are only a hundred people who have put their trust in us and about ten apprentice magicians.

It's not easy to convince yourself that a hundred and ten are worth more than a hundred and ten thousand.

But I look at the black-and-grey ash, and suddenly I feel better. I tell myself what powerful and benign individuals will always tell themselves in a situation like this, in a hundred, a thousand, or two thousand years.

These are not people facing me!

These are raging beasts!

The Power flows through me, the Power floods my veins with an effervescent broth, emerging onto my skin as bloody perspiration. There is so much Power all around: flowing out of the dead Others; dissipating from the spells that have been pronounced; flooding out of the men running into the attack. The Dark Ones knew what they were doing when they brought an entire army with them. Others do not fear the weapons of men, but the arms waving swords, the screaming mouths set in fierce grins and the eyes craving death belong to living wineskins filled with Power.
And
the more this filthy human rabble – driven together under the banner of the Dark by cruel rulers or the thirst for gain – hates and fears, the stronger are the Dark Magicians walking amongst them.

But we have one spell in reserve, a spell that has never yet been uttered beneath this sun. It was brought back by Rustam from an island far away in the north, where it was invented by a cunning Light One called Merlin: but even he, who stood so dangerously close to the Dark, had been horrified by it …

The White Mist.

Rustam pronounces strange, coarse-sounding words. I repeat them after him, without even trying to understand their meaning. The words are important, but they are only the hand of the potter, giving shape to the clay, shaping the clay mould into which the molten metal will be poured, creating bronze manacles that allow no freedom to the hands. There are words at the beginning and end, words provide the form and the direction, but it is Power that decides everything.

Power and Will.

I can no longer hold back the force that is pulsing within me, ready to tear my pitiful human body apart with every beat of my heart. I open my mouth at the same time as Rustam. I shout, but I shout without words.

The time for words is over.

The White Mist surges out of our mouths in a murky, billowing wave – and it rolls on towards the advancing army and the circle of Dark Magicians, who are weaving the cobweb of their spell … no less terrifying, but slower … just a little bit slower. The grey shadows that are just beginning to rise out of the stone are swept aside by the White Mist.

And then the White Mist reaches the Others and the human warriors.

The world in front of us loses its colours, but not in the same way that this happens in the Twilight. The world turns white, but it is the whiteness of death, not life, a displacement of colours that is as sterile as their absence. The Twilight shudders and collapses, layer upon layer adhering to each other, pulling the men screaming in pain and the Others struck dumb by fear in between its icy millstones.

And the world congeals.

The white gloom disperses. The ash falling from the sky is still there. The red-hot ground beneath our feet is still there. And there too are the petrified figures of the Others – freakish and bizarre, often entirely unlike human forms. They have been turned to granite and sandstone, coarsened and warped. A shape-shifter who was transforming into a tiger, a vampire who had fallen to the ground, magicians with their hands raised in a vain attempt to protect themselves …

There is not a trace left of the humans. The Twilight has swallowed them, digested them and reduced them to nothing.

Rustam and I are shaking. We have torn and bloodied each other's skin with our nails. Well, we had been thinking for a long time of becoming blood brothers.

‘Merlin said that Others would be cast out on the final level of the Twilight, the seventh …' Rustam says in a quiet voice. ‘He was wrong. But this is not a bad result either … This battle will live down the ages … It is a glorious battle.'

‘Look,' I say to him. ‘Look, my brother.'

Rustam looks – not with his eyes, but in the way that we Others know how to look. And he turns pale.

This battle will not live down the ages. We shall never glory in it.

To kill the enemy is valorous. To condemn him to torment is infamous. To condemn him to eternal torment is eternal infamy.

They are still alive. Turned to stone. Deprived of movement and Power, touch, vision, hearing and all the senses granted to men and Others.

But they are alive and they will remain alive – until the stone is reduced to sand, and perhaps even longer than that.

We can see their auras quivering with life. We can see their amazement, fear, fury.

We shall not glory in this battle.

We shall not talk about it.

And we shall never again pronounce the prickly, alien words that summon up the White Mist …

Why was I looking up at Alisher? And what was the ceiling doing there behind his head?

‘Are you back with us, Anton?'

I lifted myself up on my elbows and looked round.

The East is subtle. The East can be sensitive. Everyone in the
chaikhana
had pretended that they hadn't seen me faint. They had left Alisher to get on with bringing me round.

‘The White Mist,' I said.

‘All right, all right,' said Alisher, nodding. He was seriously alarmed. ‘I made a mistake: not haze, but mist. I'm sorry. But what reason is there to faint?'

‘Rustam and Gesar used the White Mist,' I said. ‘And three years ago … anyway, Gesar taught me that spell. He taught me it very thoroughly. Shared his memories. Anyway … now I can remember how it all was.'

‘Is it really so very grim?' Alisher asked.

‘Yes, very. I don't want to go to that place.'

‘But it was all a long time ago,' Alisher said reassuringly. ‘It's all over now, it's been forgotten for ages … ‘

‘If only …' I said, but I didn't try to explain. If Alisher was unlucky
enough
, he would see it and understand for himself. Because we would have to got to the Plateau of the Demons in any case. The Rustam in my borrowed memories was nothing at all like Afandi.

Just at that moment Afandi came back from the toilet. He sat down on his cushion, looked at me and asked: