Сергей Лукьяненков - Last Watch

“I told you I didn’t like the idea,” Arina said. “Even if I was still a Dark One, I wouldn’t have liked it! There hasn’t been any explosion. The criminals who stole a tactical nuclear war-head have repented and returned it to the authorities. They are being interrogated at this very moment.” She sighed. “And not very humanely, I’m afraid. There hasn’t been any explosion, and there won’t be.”

“Arina!” Edgar had even stopped groaning. “Why? You could have just delayed it…for a guarantee…”

“I can’t do things like that now,” Arina explained with a sweet smile. “Unfortunately, I just can’t. I told you at the beginning that I would cut out any acts of destruction with massive human casualties.”

“Then why…did you let me start all this anyway…,” Edgar said, straightening up with difficulty. He gave me a glance filled with hate. “Bastard! You’ve…smashed everything up!”

“You won’t need any of it for the next seventy-seven times,” I replied spitefully. “Didn’t you notice the spell that Afandi flung at you?”

Arina laughed. “So that’s it. That old joker Afandi. Yes, the next seventy-five times you can pester someone else, Edgar.”

“Why did you do this?” Edgar asked Arina with pain in his voice.

“So that what you said would sound convincing. Anton could have spotted a lie, even with the Cat on his neck. Saushkin, please, let our guest go. He won’t fight anymore. Boys always try to settle their disagreements by the most primitive methods…”

Gennady reluctantly moved away from me and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed under him. I looked around for a chair that wasn’t a total wreck and sat down too, deliberately not asking for permission. Arina went back to her own chair. Suddenly realizing that he was the only one standing, and that he was still clutching his private parts, Edgar also took a seat.

“All right, now everyone’s settled down and we can talk calmly,” Arina said in a voice that reminded me of a hostess at a literary salon who has just watched one poet pulling another’s curly hair. “Peace, peace, and more peace! Anton, let me explain things to you. You understand that it’s far more difficult for me to lie than it is for Gennady or Edgar. We don’t want any atrocities, we’re not trying to destroy the world. We’re not trying to exterminate all human beings. All we’re doing is bringing the withdrawn back to life.”

“Arina, what did they hook you with?” I asked. “Someone you loved? A child?”

For a moment I clearly saw sadness in Arina’s eyes.

“A loved one…Yes, there was someone I loved, sorcerer. He was here for a while, and then gone. He didn’t even live out his human lifetime, he was killed… And I had a daughter. Earlier, before him. She died too. When she was only four…from plague. I wasn’t there with her, I arrived too late to save her. But not even the Crown will bring them back; they were people. Wherever they might have gone, there’s no way for us to reach them, and no way for them to come back.”

“Then why…” The question was left unfinished, hanging in the air.

Gennady gave a quiet, hoarse laugh. “She’s got ideals! She’s a Light One now, like you. She only kills for noble reasons…”

“Hush, bloodsucker!” said Arina, and her eyes flashed. Then she immediately continued in a steady voice, “He’s telling the truth, Anton. I became a Light One by my own deliberate choice. By the dictates of my reason, not my heart, you might say. I’m sick of the Dark Ones. I’ve never seen anything good come of them. I was thinking of joining the Inquisition, but I had too many old charges to answer. And I don’t like them anyway, the smug hypocrites… I beg your pardon, Edgar, that doesn’t apply to you, of course. I went straight to Siberia. And during that time I lived in Tomsk, a nice quiet town. It inclines you toward the Light. I worked for a living the way I used to, as a local witch. I put an advertisement in the newspaper, and when they came from the Watch to check on me, I pretended to be a quack. It’s not hard for me to wind the average watchman around my little finger. And then I realized that I was only doing good deeds. I only sent husbands back to their wives if I could see their love was still alive, that it would be better for everyone. I healed sicknesses. I found people who were lost. I made people younger again…just a little bit. The important thing there was to use just a little bit of magic-all the rest is making people believe in themselves, making them live a healthy life. And not a single hex, not a single potion to send someone back to a woman he didn’t love… So I decided I’d had enough of playing Dark games. But do you know what it takes for a Dark One to change color?”

I shook my head.

“You have to think of something immense, something really important. It’s not as simple as ‘if you’ve done good deeds for a year, you become a Light One; if you’ve worked evil, you become a Dark One.’ No. You have to do something that turns everything in you upside down. Something that will bleach white everything that came before, everything you did with your life…or simply cancel it out.”

“Was Merlin undone by his massacre of innocent children?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so,” Arina said, nodding. “What else? He wanted so badly to create a kingdom of justice and nobility here on earth-that was what he nurtured Arthur for. How can you be choosy about your methods in the pursuit of such a great cause? And suddenly the probability lines showed a child who would grow up and destroy the entire kingdom…I wasn’t alive then, so I don’t know what Merlin was thinking and what he wanted. But the very moment that Merlin decided to murder the innocent for the sake of his dream, the Great Light Magician died and the Great Dark Magician was born.”

Ouroboros again. Life in death and death in life.

Could it all really have been so very simple for Arina? She was tired of being a Dark One, she was drawn to do good deeds-and so she became a Light One? She reformed, like the old woman Shapoklyak from the children’s story, and changed sides…

Or was there something else involved? For instance, the long and complicated relationship that bound her to Gesar? Those joint intrigues of theirs, when the Light Magician and the Dark Witch pursued the same goals? Had Gesar inclined her toward the Light, or had Arina realized that there wasn’t that much difference between her Darkness and Gesar’s Light?

I didn’t know, and she wouldn’t answer me if I asked. Just as she wouldn’t answer if I asked whether Gesar and Zabulon had known her plans in advance and were playing their own game, allowing the Last Watch to get closer to Merlin’s legacy.

“But how did you and Edgar get together? If it’s not a secret, that is.”

Edgar didn’t say anything. He was whispering-obviously trying to heal his injuries as best he could.

“Why should it be a secret?” said Arina, looking at her comrade-in-arms and, apparently, lover. “He managed to track me down after all. It had become a matter of principle for him. Well, he tracked me down, but by that time he wasn’t interested in his career anymore. His wife had been killed, he had found out about Merlin’s last artifact, and he wanted to get his hands on it. And the quickest way to do that was to become a Higher One-but not simply a Higher One, a zero-point magician, like Merlin. Edgar thought I could reconstruct the Fuaran. He overestimated my abilities a little there. But I liked what he told me about the Crown. So the two of us joined forces.”

I nodded. That sounded like the way it must have happened. Edgar, already obsessed by the idea of reaching the artifact, had found Arina. Together they had coopted Saushkin, who was thirsting for vengeance, into their “Last Watch.” And they had set to work. An Inquisitor who had access to an absolutely vast repository of magical amulets; a highly intelligent witch who had become a Light One; a Higher Vampire who was going insane with grief for his son and his wife…