Сергей Лукьяненко - Day Watch

"The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable…"

Where can you be, Zabulon, if your famous Iridium isn't receiving my call? Where are you, where?

I don't love you, Zabulon. And I probably never did love you. I think I've only just realized what love is. But you do love me! We were together and we were happy. You gave me this whole world and… please answer! You're my chief, you're my teacher, you're my lover, so tell me-what should I do now? When I'm left face-to-face with my enemy… and my beloved? Run? Fight? Die? What should I do, Zabulon?

I entered the Twilight.

The shadows of the children's dreams flickered all around me. A banquet… those streams of energy. Light and dark. Fears and sorrows, misery and resentment. I could see right through the whole Azure section. There was the boy, Dimka, feeling offended in his sleep because his friends hadn't called him to drink some of their lemonade. There was the tireless little girl, Irochka, who was nicknamed the Energizer, whining quietly into her pillow because someone had stolen her inflatable ring for swimming… And there was my faithful energy donor Natasha-she'd lost her little brother in the strange, dark back alleys of a dream and now she was running, crying as she tried to find him…

I don't want to gather Power. I don't want to prepare for battle. I don't want anything.

"Zabulon!" I shouted into the shimmering gray gloom. "I call to you! Zabulon…"

No answer.

It was easier for Aunt Polly to get an answer from Tom Sawyer with his hand stuck in the jar of jam than for me to get through to Zabulon…

"Zabulon…" I repeated.

This isn't the way I imagined this night… nothing like it.

Igor…Igor…

What are you doing now? Gathering Power? Consulting with the all-wise Gesar? Or are you sitting staring dully into the mirror… like me…

Mirror, mirror… can you tell my fortune?

I'm not very good at fortune-telling, hut sometimes I have managed to see the future …

No.

I don't want to.

I know there's nothing good there.

They reached the beach when the eclipse had already begun. My girls were squealing and grabbing the pieces of dark glass from each other. They couldn't understand why I didn't ask for a piece. Oh girls, girls… what difference does the blinding light of the sun make to me? I can look the sun full in the face and not blink.

The boys of the fourth brigade were jumping around Igor, hurrying him on. They couldn't understand why their beloved camp leader wasn't going faster. They couldn't understand why he'd led them to the beach by such a long, roundabout route.

But I understood.

Through the Twilight I could see the faint flashes of Power being gathered.

What are you doing, Igor … my beloved enemy …

At each step the smile faded on one more face. Now a ten-year-old fidgety nuisance was no longer feeling happy about making up with his friend. Now an eleven-year-old fidget had forgotten about the black shell he found on the seashore. Now the serious man of fifteen years had stopped thinking about the date he was promised this evening.

Igor was walking through Artek in the same way that Anton Gorodetsky had once walked through the streets of Moscow.

And I, who was his primordial enemy, wanted to shout out, "What are you doing?"

Anton didn't outwit Zabulon because he gathered more Power than everybody else. Zabulon was still more powerful.

Anton knew how to use it properly…

Will you?

I don't want you to win. I love only myself. But what am I to do if you have become the greater part of me? Transfixed my life like a bolt of lightning?

Igor was collecting everything. Every last drop of Light energy around him. He was breaking all the laws and agreements and staking everything on a single throw of the dice-including his own life. And not just because he was burning with desire to protect the little human children from the evil witch.

He didn't want to live either. But, unlike me, he was prepared to live for others. If that was the way it had to be.

The last one he drew Power from was Makar.

I'd been feeling the boy looking at me for a long time. With the miserable, longing gaze of a boy in love with a grown-up woman. Miserable, and filled with the sadness of farewell.

It wasn't the kind of sadness that we Dark Ones can use. It was a bright sadness.

Igor drank it all up.

He had transgressed all the boundaries. And I couldn't even respond in the same way-I was bound by the promise I had given to Zabulon, bound by my old misdemeanor.

And also by the insane hope that he would do the right thing. That my enemy would win his victory, but I wouldn't lose either.

Up in the sky the bright disk of the sun was slowly dying. The children were already tired of staring at it through their pieces of glass. They were wallowing in the sea under the strange spectral light that reminded the two Others on the beach of the Twilight.

I turned to Igor and caught his eye.

"Leave," his lips whispered silently. "Leave, or I will kill you."

"Kill me," I answered silently.

I am a Dark One.

I will not leave.

What is he going to do, this enemy of mine? Attack me? Despite my legal right to be here? Call in the Yalta division of the Night Watch? He must already have consulted with them… and he knows there are no charges that can be brought against me.

Igor took a step closer.

"By the Light and the Darkness, I challenge you…" his lips whispered.

I shuddered.

I hadn't been expecting this. Not this.

"Beyond Light and Darkness, you and I, one against one, to the end."

He had challenged me to a duel.

It's an old custom that came into being with the Great Treaty between the Light Ones and the Dark Ones. A custom that is hardly ever used. Because the victor has to answer to the Inquisition. Because a duel only takes place when there is no legitimate basis for conflict, when the Watches have no le-gal competence to intervene, when emotions speak louder than reason.

"And may the Light be my witness."

Nobody else could have seen the tiny petal of white fire that flared up for an instant on Igor's open palm. He himself started when he saw it. The higher powers rarely respond to appeals from simple Watch agents…

"Igor, I love you…"

His face quivered as if I had struck it. He didn't believe me. He couldn't believe me.

"Do you accept my challenge, witch?"

Yes, I can refuse. Go back to Moscow, humiliated but secure, with the stigma of having refused a challenge… every lousy werewolf would spit as I walked past…

Or I could try to kill Igor. Gather so much Power that I could stand up to him…

"May the Darkness be my witness…" I said, opening my hand. And a tiny scrap of Darkness quivered on my palm.

"Choose," said Igor.

I shook my head. I wasn't going to choose the place, the time, or the type of duel.

Why can't you understand me? Why?

"Then the choice is mine. Now. In the sea. The press."

His eyes are dark. An eclipse isn't frightening - it's only something cutting off the light .

The sea was unnaturally warm. Maybe because the air had turned cold, as if it were already evening? All that was left of the sun was a narrow crescent at the top of the disk-now even a human being could look at it without blinking.

I swam through the warm water without looking back at the shore, where no one had noticed the two camp leaders slip into the sea without paying any attention to the jellyfish that hurried out of their way.

I remembered the first time I ever went to the sea. I was still very little. I still didn't know that I didn't belong to the human race, that fate had decided I would be an Other. I was staying at Alushta with my dad, and he was teaching me to swim… I remembered the feeling of delight when the water first submitted to my will…