Сергей Лукьяненков - Last Watch

“And so we have an Other who has managed to raise his level,” said Zabulon. “My dear Gesar, don’t you think that the Inquisition got hold of the Fuaran after all?”

“No,” Gesar said definitely.

“If Kostya had survived,” Zabulon said, thinking out loud, “then we might have hypothesized that he had memorized the recipes in the Fuaran. And managed to create some…er…copy of the book. Perhaps not as powerful, but still capable of raising Edgar to the Higher level. And then a Light One could have been subjected to the same procedure.”

“And then we could suspect any Light One,” Gesar summed up. “But fortunately for us, Kostya is dead and he wasn’t able to reveal the secret of the Fuaran to anyone.”

“Did he not have time to share the contents of the book with his father?”

“No,” Gesar replied firmly. “It’s a book of enchantment. You can’t retell it over the phone, you can’t photograph it.”

“What a shame, that would be such a good idea,” Zabulon said, clicking his fingers. “A little witch showed me just recently that there’s this thing in cell phones, it’s called SMS messaging. You can send a photograph over the phone!”

At first I thought Zabulon was being witty again. Speaking with such amazement about the SMS messages that little kids cheerfully send each other in class, he looked very comical.

And then I realized he was being serious. Sometimes I forget just how old they are. To Zabulon, a cell phone is like magic.

“Fortunately it’s not possible,” said Gesar, returning to the question at hand. “He could have memorized something and reproduced it…but no, that’s nonsense. Even that’s impossible. The nature of a vampire is different from the nature of a witch. Only an experienced witch could re-create the Fuaran, even in a weaker form…”

I looked at Gesar and asked, “Tell me, Boris Ignatievich…can a witch become a Light One?”

The happiest moments in the life of parents of a small child in Russia are from a quarter to nine until nine o’clock in the evening. Fifteen minutes of happiness while the child joyfully watches advertisements for yogurt and chocolate (even though that in itself is a bad thing) and then his or her eyes are glued to Piggy, Crow, Stepashka, and the other characters in the program Good Night, Kiddies.

If only the people who allocate time for children’s programs on TV sat with their own children in the evening, instead of dumping them on highly trained nannies, then Good Night would last half an hour. Or an hour.

And, by the way, extending the show would be great for improving the birth rate. Fifteen minutes is not very long, whichever way you look at it. At least there would be time to drink a cup of tea in peace.

I didn’t tell Svetlana the details of what we saw in Saushkin’s flat. But she understood everything perfectly well, even from a very brief account. No, it didn’t spoil her appetite, she carried on drinking tea. We had seen plenty of worse things in the Watch. But of course, she turned a bit gloomy.

“We have a theory about the Light One,” I said, trying to lead the conversation to a different subject. “Gesar checked out all the Higher Ones, no one’s under suspicion there. But Edgar had a lot of charms on him. That’s the work of a witch. So I thought…”

“That Arina had changed color?” Svetlana asked, looking at me. “Maybe.”

“You squeezed her pretty hard that time,” I said. “You must have felt her mind. Do you think she could have become a Light One?”

“For an ordinary Other, it’s impossible,” Svetlana said. “Or almost impossible…For a Higher One…for Arina…”

She paused, remembering. I waited, glancing now and then at the TV screen, where a sad little girl was dragging a mitten along on a string and imagining that it was a puppy. How terrible! That would be the end of all our mittens and gloves. Nadya wouldn’t actually turn them into dogs, of course-any magic has its limits. But there would be more toy dogs in the apartment from now on.

It was time to buy her a puppy, before life became unbearable.

“She could,” Svetlana said. “She could have become a Light One. Her soul is very strange, there’s everything mixed up together inside it…there weren’t any particular atrocities, though. But Arina swore an oath to me that she would live for a hundred years without killing a single human being or Other. She can’t go against that.”

“And she hasn’t killed anyone,” I observed. “But as for supplying Edgar with amulets and raising his level of Power…nothing was said about that. Arina has enough wisdom to interpret your prohibition selectively.”

“Anton, we’re talking about the wrong thing,” Svetlana said, putting down her cup. “Arina, who has become a Light One, or some other enchantress-that’s not the point at all. The important question to ask is: What are they trying to achieve? What has united them? The ambition to destroy the entire world? Nonsense! You only find people who want to destroy the world just for the sake of it in stupid films. Power? But that’s stupid too, Anton! They have enough Power already. No artifact, not even one made by a crazy magician fifteen hundred years ago, will allow them to achieve absolute Power. Until we understand what they are trying to achieve, what they want to find at the bottom of the Twilight, then it’s completely irrelevant whether it is Arina or not, if she has become a Light One or disguised herself so that Thomas couldn’t recognize her.”

“Sveta, do you have any hunches?” I pretended not to notice that she had said “we.” It’s true what they say-you never really leave the Watch completely.

“The Crown of All Things erases the barriers between the levels of the Twilight…,” Svetlana said, and paused.

“Mama, the cartoon’s over!” Nadya shouted.

“Try comparing it with the White Mist. The spells obviously have a single root,” Svetlana concluded, getting up and walking toward Nadya. “Time for bed.”

“A story!” Nadya demanded.

“Not today. Daddy and I have to talk.”

Nadya looked at me resentfully, fiddling with the thin string of turquoise beads around her neck. She muttered, “You’re always talking…And Daddy’s always going away.”

“That’s Daddy’s job,” Svetlana explained calmly, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hand. “You know he fights against the forces of Darkness.”

“Like Harry Potter,” Nadya said rather doubtfully, looking at me. I suppose I didn’t have the spectacles or the scar on my forehead that were needed to match up to the image.

“Yes, like Harry Potter, Fat-Frumos, and Luke Skywalker.”

“Like Luke Skywalker,” Nadya decided, and gave me a smile. Obviously that was the character she thought I resembled most of all. Well, that was better than nothing.

“I’ll be straight back,” said Svetlana, and the two of them went to the nursery. I sat there, looking at a chocolate with a bite taken out of it. It had alternate layers of dark chocolate and white chocolate. When I counted seven layers, I laughed. It was a graphic illustration of the structure of the Twilight. The White Mist folded all the layers together, turning any Others who got in the way into stone. OK, let’s sidestep the effect of the spell in battle. What happened afterward? I closed my eyes, trying to remember.

Afterward the Twilight straightened out again. The levels of the Twilight returned to their old places.

Why had we decided that the Crown of All Things would join the Twilight and the real world together forever? Simply because we believed what Rustam had said? But how did he know…The Twilight would fold up-and then expand again. As it left our world, the Twilight would spread out its layers again. It was like a stiff spring: You could compress it, but it would straighten back out.