Сергей Лукьяненко - Day Watch

"Then why all this activity by the Dark Ones? They almost violated the Treaty, simply in order to get Svetlana out of the game."

"Think," said Igor, glancing into Anton's eyes. "Let's take the chess analogy all the way…"

"A pawn that reaches the far side of the board…"

"… becomes any other piece."

Anton shrugged. "Igor, that's obvious anyway. We're all pawns, but some of us have a chance to become queens. Svetlana has. You don't, I don't, Semyon doesn't… but it's a long way to the far edge of the board, and the Dark Ones don't need to be in such a hurry to eliminate Svetlana."

"The Chalk of Destiny," said Igor.

"What about it? Gesar wanted to use Egor, the boy without any destiny to make him into…"

"Into what?"

Anton shrugged. "A prophet, a philosopher, a poet, a magician… I don't know. Someone who would lead humanity toward the Light. Or perhaps a Mirror? Another Mirror, like Vitaly Rogoza, only he would be on our side?"

"But Svetlana didn't want to interfere," Igor said with a nod. "The boy Egor was left with just his own destiny."

"But then…" Anton began and stopped short. He didn't know if he had the right to tell Igor the truth he had discovered, even under the protection of the amulet.

"But then Olga rewrote someone's destiny with the other half of the Chalk," Igor said with a laugh. "That's an open secret already. The important thing is that the operation was successful anyway. Svetlana didn't do it, but Olga did. And incidentally Gesar managed to have Olga rehabilitated."

"Incidentally?" Anton queried, shaking his head. "Okay, let's say incidentally… But that's the second layer of the truth. I'm sure there's a third layer too."

"The third layer is the person whose destiny Olga rewrote. As soon as Zabulon heard she'd been rehabilitated, he realized he'd been duped. Taken in by a simple diversionary maneuver. And the Dark Ones started looking. They checked poor Egor a dozen times-in case the Book of Destiny had been rewritten twice for him…"

"And how do you know that?"

"I was keeping an eye on the boy. Gesar told me to-it was obvious the Dark Ones would start looking for a trick."

"And?"

"No, there were no tricks with Egor. It wasn't his destiny that was rewritten."

"Then whose was it?"

Igor looked into Anton's eyes without saying anything. As if he didn't have the right to say it himself.

"Svetlana's?" Anton exclaimed in sudden realization. And he suddenly thought that in his place any Dark One would have squealed, "Mine?"

"It looks like it. A brilliant and elegant move. There was such an ocean of Power raging around her that it was impossible for anyone to notice what was being done with her Book of Destiny. And the Dark Ones can't check her Book of Destiny-that would be as good as a declaration of war."

"Gesar wants to accelerate Svetlana's transformation into a Great Enchantress?"

"Out of the question. That's a violation of the Treaty. Dig a bit deeper."

Anton looked at the circles on the paper. He took a felt-tip pen and drew a bright scarlet line upward from Svetlana, then another circle where it ended. An empty circle.

"Yes," said Igor. "Precisely. You know what time this is now, don't you?"

"The end of the millennium…"

"Two thousand years since the birth of Jesus Christ;" Igor said with a laugh.

"Ieshua was a supreme Light magician," said Anton. "I don't even know if we can call him a magician… he was the Light itself… but… Gesar wants a second coming of the Messiah?"

"You said it, not me," Igor replied. "Let's drink… to the Light."

Anton drank a full glass in total bewilderment. He shook his head. "No, but this… Igor, this is playing with the pure powers. With the foundations of the universe! How could he take the risk?"

"Anton, I'm certain that's the way it was all planned. Judge for yourself-there's a boom in religious faiths everywhere, one way or another everybody's expecting either the end of the world or the Second Coming… but then, they're the same thing."

"Not everybody…" Anton protested. "Don't exaggerate."

"Not everybody, but enough people for the torrent of human expectations to start reshaping reality. And if you could just help things along a bit, if you could rewrite someone's destiny… Gesar went for broke. Gesar wants to add someone new to our ranks, an Other so powerful that none of the Dark Ones will be able to match him. Not Zabulon, not a certain modest California farmer, not the owner of a small hotel in Spain, and not a popular Japanese singer… no one."

"That might be true," Anton admitted. "But Svetlana's lost her Power now, and for a long time."

"And what of it? Does that prevent her from having a child?"

"Stop," said Anton, waving his hands in warning. "Now we're getting ahead of ourselves! We can believe any hypothesis, but first let's look at the other events. The Mirror, for instance."

"The Mirror…" Igor frowned. "A Mirror is created by the Twilight. Zabulon couldn't make use of him directly… but he certainly could bring those stupid sect members to Moscow with that artifact of theirs and feed Rogoza with Power. And the reason for doing that is obvious-to destroy Svetlana."

"Rogoza didn't destroy her. He only drained her, but then that's…"

"One of us didn't play the game the way Zabulon had planned it," Igor replied. "Someone didn't make the move that would have led to the Mirror totally destroying Svetlana… as an individual. Maybe what saved her was the fact that Tiger Cub and Andrei had already died? A Mirror isn't exactly a Dark Other, and he isn't directly involved in the confrontation between the two Watches. You see, maybe he was expecting another blow of some kind? From you, for instance. From Gesar. But the blow never came… and he didn't strike back with all his strength."

"Then explain to me, Igor-why did Zabulon set you and Alisa up?"

"That was an accident," Igor muttered. "I told you, Alisa…"

"Okay, so she didn't know. But Zabulon knew, believe me! And he sent her to her death-he swapped one piece for another. Why?"

"I wish I knew," said Igor with a shrug.

–«¦»-

Raivo began walking around the hotel room, gesticulating with untypical fervor.

"I still think there's trouble ahead! We have no right to count on assistance from the Day Watch of Moscow, of Prague, or Helsinki -from any of them."

"But that Dark One promised to help us…" Yari objected.

Raivo frowned and waved his hands through the air picturesquely. "He promised. Yes, of course he did. And who was it who promised our brothers that Fafnir would be resurrected?"

"It seems to me," Yukha said in a quiet voice, "that it would have been far more rational to serve the great cause of Fafnir's resurrection than actually try to resurrect the ancient magician…"

There was a moment's silence.

"Yukha…" Yari said reproachfully. "You… you can't just say that…"

"Why can't I? The times when magicians used to play without any rules are long gone. Do you want a global cataclysm?"

"But our…"

"Our decrepit leaders were out of their minds. And that's why they were duped by somebody's promises. That's why they were killed in Berne… And we won't get any help-Raivo's right about that. Those who have departed can't be brought back.

Pasi believed too-and where's Pasi now? Dematerialized in the Twilight by Gesar."

The telephone on the table rang. Clearly reluctant to stop talking, Yukha picked up the receiver. "Yes."

The next moment he leapt in the air, dropping his glass of Czech beer. He shouted: "You? You… where are you calling from? What?"

He listened for a minute, with the expression on his face growing ever more joyful and confused. The expression of a man given good news after he has already braced himself to hear bad news and even managed to infect everyone else with his own pessimism. Finally Yukha put the phone down and whispered: