Сергей Лукьяненков - Last Watch

“I thought about that,” Edgar said with a nod. “From the very beginning, I thought that of all the Light Ones I know, you were the sanest. But I happened to find myself working with Gennady here. And he was absolutely against it. He doesn’t like you. And you know why: You killed his son. His wife laid herself to rest because of you. So how could we take you into the Last Watch?”

“A very romantic name, by the way.”

“That’s Gennady, he’s a great romantic.” Edgar laughed. “No, we weren’t going to touch you. Revenge is a fine thing, but only if you’ve got nothing else left… Then Gesar had to go and send you to Edinburgh!”

“Did you kill Victor because he recognized Gennady?”

“Yes,” said Edgar, nodding. “It was an improvised move. Gennady got nervous. He thought Kostya’s old school friend couldn’t have turned up by accident, that we were being followed. It was a mistake, of course. But we did discover how to open the barrier on the third level. We didn’t have precise information about that before then.”

“But you knew about the golem on the fifth level?”

“Oh yes!” said Edgar, laughing again. “After Annabel was killed I was transferred to work in the secure archive. You know…to settle down and get over my pain in a quiet job…If only you knew, Light One, what they have hidden away in the strong rooms at the Inquisition! I had never even suspected that things like that could be created. I tell you honestly, in the last hundred years, the quality of magic has actually deteriorated. We’ve been spoiled by using human things. But we used to have things that were like telephones and cars and airplanes…they weren’t just like them, they were better. We could have founded a civilization based entirely on magic!”

“Except that we produce less Power than we consume,” I said. “We can’t live without people.”

“I thought about that, too,” said Edgar, brightening up. “We could have-Hey, don’t slow down! Take the left lane, it’s free now…So, I’ve thought about that subject. I picture the ideal society as something close to the medieval model. People living a simple, healthy, uncomplicated life, working in the open air, pursuing the arts and crafts. No centralized states would be needed-a feudal system with barons and nominal kings would be quite good enough. And we Others would live partly separately and partly among the people. Without hiding from them! And everyone would know about us. Of course, under this arrangement even people could challenge a magician or a vampire. Let them! There has to be an effective mechanism of natural selection to weed out the weak and excessively cruel Others. A world like that would be far more pleasant than the one we have now-for Others and people. Have you never read any fantasy?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you read any of those books? Lord of the Rings? Conan? A Wizard of Earthsea? Harry Potter?”

“I’ve read a few,” I said. “Some are a bit naive, but some are interesting. Quite passable as escapist literature, even for us.”

“And it’s far more popular with people than science fiction,” Edgar said confidently. “That’s the paradox, people aren’t interested in reading about settling on Mars or flying to the stars-all the things that people really can achieve, but Others can’t. But they dream about becoming magicians, rushing into battle with a big sharp sword… If only they knew what the wounds from a real sword look like!…What does all this mean? That a medieval world in which magic exists is the one most attractive to people!”

“Well, yes,” I said. “Of course. Because no one thinks about how delightful it is to relieve yourself into a cesspit when it’s twenty degrees below freezing, or the stench those pits give out when it’s ninety degrees in the shade. Because the heroes in the books don’t get head colds, indigestion, appendicitis, or malaria, and if they do, there’s a Light Healer right there on hand. Because everyone sees himself sitting on the throne, wearing a magician’s cloak, or, at the very least, in the retinue of a brave and jolly baron. Not out in a parched field with a wooden hoe in his hands, watching the baron’s retinue ride off after they’ve just trampled his pitiful harvest, half of which belongs to the brave and jolly baron anyway.”

“That’s a different matter,” Edgar said peaceably. “There are pluses and minuses to everything. But there wouldn’t be any advertising, politicians, lawyers, genetically modified food…”

“It’s time you joined Greenpeace. Your world would have lots of children who were jinxed in their mothers’ wombs. And even more perfectly normal children dying during birth because of incorrect presentation or lack of medicines. Edgar, are you really planning to throw the world back into the Middle Ages?”

Edgar sighed.

“No, Anton. That’s a very, very unlikely outcome. I can tell you honestly that’s what I’m hoping for, but the chances aren’t great.”

“I’m thinking very seriously about turning the wheel and crashing into a pillar,” I said. “See that pedestrian bridge over the ring road? It has these very tempting concrete pillars…”

“We wouldn’t be hurt,” Edgar replied. “And I don’t think you would be either. You’ve got a good car: air bags, safety belts…you could survive. Don’t be silly. If you want to kill yourself, try working a bit of magic.”

“What did you dig up in the archives? What are you hoping for?”

“Don’t tell him,” Gennady said morosely. But his words seemed to have the opposite effect from what he intended. After all, Edgar was a primordial Dark One, used to regarding vampires with disdain. Even his allies.

“The Inquisition has always taken a great interest in artifacts that lie out of its reach,” Edgar said. “And particularly in the artifacts created by Merlin…for perfectly understandable reasons. Not much was known about the Crown of All Things. Only that it was in Scotland and was potentially one of the most powerful magical objects in existence. If not the most powerful. But it was believed that no information about the Crown existed. Fortunately, several years ago the Inquisition began compiling a comprehensive catalogue and putting everything in the computer system. This included translating into electronic form the results of medieval interrogations of witches and reports by agents and scholars that had been forgotten by everybody. I searched for everything to do with Merlin and discovered a few lines that had been forgotten for a long, long time. A certain thirteenth-century Light Enchantress, first-level…let’s say that she came into possession of information above and beyond her rank… This enchantress was questioned about a dust-up in Glasgow, which was still a small provincial town at the time. And during the interrogation, she mentioned the ‘last artifact’ created by Merlin. They asked her to say what this artifact did and she replied, to translate literally, ‘The Crown is what all the Others who have left us dream about, what they wait for in the Twilight, what will bring them happiness and restore their freedom.’ Nobody attached any significance to her words at the time, and they just lay in the archives for centuries. Until that sheet of parchment was put into a scanner and I started a search with the key word ‘Merlin.’”

“And I assume that this information is no longer in the Inquisition’s database?” I queried.

Edgar just laughed.

“You want to bring dead Others back to life?”

“Departed,” Gennady hissed. “Departed, but not dead!”

“It’s not that simple,” said Edgar. “We think that the Crown of All Things will fuse the Twilight world and the human world, eliminating the barriers between the levels. At present the departed ones cannot-or cannot effectively-return to our world, and we are not strong enough to stay in the lower levels of the Twilight for any length of time, but the Crown will change all that. Our departed ones will be with us.”