Сергей Лукьяненков - Last Watch

“Get up,” I said strictly. “It’s damp!”

Nadya jumped to her feet, dusted off her velvet jumpsuit, and jabbered, “Mommy taught me how to walk into the shadow! That’s one! And there was a monkey and a snake fighting, and they both beat each other. That’s two! Two men and a woman were watching the snake and saying very bad words. That’s three! And Mommy told me to bring you straight back home for supper! That’s four!”

She gulped when she saw the huge crowd around her, then lowered her eyes in embarrassment and said in a polite little girl’s voice, “Hello…”

“Hello,” said Merlin, squatting down in front of her. “Are you Nadezhda?”

“Yes,” Nadya said proudly.

“I’m glad I’ve seen you,” said Merlin. “Take your daddy home. Only not straight home. First go back to the sleeping people. And then home.”

“Backward means forward?” Nadya asked.

“That’s right.”

“You look like a wizard from a cartoon,” Nadya said suspiciously. Just to be on the safe side, she took hold of my hand, and that clearly made her feel more confident.

“I used to be a wizard,” Merlin confessed.

“A good one or a bad one?”

“All kinds,” he said with a sad smile. “Go now, Nadezhda.”

Nadya cast a wary look at Merlin and asked me, “Shall we go, Daddy?”

“Yes, let’s go,” I said.

I turned around and nodded to Merlin, who was watching us silently, in sad anticipation. The first to raise her hand and wave good-bye was Tiger Cub. Then Alisa. And then they were all waving to us…waving good-bye forever.

And when my daughter, the newly initiated Absolute Enchantress, took a step forward, I stepped after her, holding her hand in order not to lose my way in the swirling vortex of Power that had completed its circle and was returning us to our world.

Because the Twilight, of course, has no end, just as no ring or circle has an end.

Because the warmth of human love and the cold of human hate, the running of beasts and the singing of birds, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings and the sprouting of a grain through the earth do not pass away, leaving no trace. Because the universal stream of living Power out of which parasites like the blue moss and the Others greedily snatch their crumbs does not disappear without a trace-it returns to the world that is awaiting rebirth.

Because we all live on the seventh level of the Twilight.

“HOW! LOVELY! IT IS! HERE!” NADYA EXCLAIMED.

I picked her up in my arms. We were standing on a cobbled street in Edinburgh, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of sleeping people. The sirens were drawing closer and closer as the time of the Others was coming to an end.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Everything here is real.”

“Only, everyone’s sleeping,” Nadya observed sadly. “Like in the fairy story about the sleeping princess. Can I wake them up?”

She could… She could do anything at all now-if she was taught.

“But aren’t you tired?” I asked. My legs were buckling under me and I was feeling a bit dizzy.

“What from?” Nadya asked in surprise.

“In a little while,” I said. “Just a little while, we’ll wake everyone up…all those we can. Daddy just has to do one thing that’s very important first. Will you help me?”

“How?”

“Just hold my hand,” I said. I closed my eyes and flung out my arms. I held my breath.

I had to feel this city. The stones and the walls that remembered Merlin and Arthur. People might have forgotten, but the stones remembered. The ancient fortress, set above the city like a crown, remembered too, and it was waiting.

Why were we so stupid sometimes? Why did we expect magic to be hidden in something we could hold in our hands when it could be everywhere all around us?

Of course, Merlin hadn’t hidden his most important creation in the Twilight. He hadn’t put his trust in the strength of the golem, but he hadn’t put it in the strength of oak chests, either. This ancient fortress had stood on the cliff for fifteen hundred years. It had been defended and captured, it had been destroyed and rebuilt, the proud kings of Scotland had kept their treasures in it-and the stones covered with runes that Merlin had laid in the deepest foundations had been waiting for their time to come.

I only had to reach out to them. Touch them. Feel them…

“Light One!” someone roared behind me. I looked around, emerging from my trance.

Edgar and Arina were standing there, just looking at me-and I was astonished to discover that their eyes were full of fear. Gennady was running toward me. Running and shouting. Surely he didn’t think that the strength of magic depended on how loud you shouted? He came rushing toward me, taking immense bounds, transforming as he advanced, looking less and less like a human being. His fangs were growing, his skin was turning the color of death, the hair on his head was falling out in tangled gray skeins.

I raised my hand, gathering Power for the Gray Prayer.

But just then Nadya stepped forward and shrieked in the vampire’s face, “Don’t shout at my daddy!”

Gennady staggered. What had struck him was more powerful than his hate. But he couldn’t stop; he kept moving forward as if he was running against a hurricane. And he collapsed at our feet. Nadya squealed and hid behind me.

I squatted down and looked into Gennady Saushkin’s eyes. He looked at me and asked, “Can’t they come?”

“No, they can’t come. And they would never have been able to. But I will do what they asked me to. Go, while there is still time.”

“Help me, Anton,” he said in an almost normal voice.

“Nadya, look the other way!” I ordered.

“I’m not looking, I’m not!” my daughter mumbled, turning away and putting her hands over her eyes to make quite sure.

I raised my hand, with Gennady watching my movements as if he was already spellbound. And the Gray Prayer dispatched the vampire to the sixth level of the Twilight.

I got up and looked at Edgar and Arina. “A zero-point Other,” Arina said in delight. “An Absolute Enchantress…”

“For five minutes I’ll be much too busy to be concerned with you,” I said, looking at them. “But afterward…”

“We have the Minoan Sphere,” Edgar said pleadingly. “Can we?”

“They’ll search for you,” I said. “And so will I. Remember that. But just now you have five minutes. And only because they asked me to forgive.”

“What are you going to do?” Arina asked.

“What those who have withdrawn have been dreaming of. Grant them death. Because without death, resurrection is impossible.”

Edgar narrowed his eyes. He opened a bag that hung at his waist, took out a small ivory sphere, and handed it to Arina. She took it without saying a word.

“Help me too, Light One,” Edgar said. “What’s it to you?”

“You’ve got protective charms draped all over you like garlands on a Christmas tree. How can I help you?”

“I’ll help him,” Arina suddenly said. “Don’t you get sidetracked. Do what you’ve got to do.”

I didn’t understand exactly what it was that she did. She seemed just to move her lips. Edgar smiled, and for an instant his face was handsome and almost young. Then his legs buckled and he collapsed onto the cobblestones of the street.

“But you’re not planning to dematerialize,” I remarked. “What kind of a Light One are you?”

“Well, one way or another the goal has been achieved now,” Arina declared. “The withdrawn will get what they were longing for!”

I shook my head. Then I looked at the castle and closed my eyes again.

“I’m returning your phone,” Arina said. “I don’t want anybody else’s things.”