Sergei Lukyanenko - The New Watch

‘Something terrible’s about to happen,’ Gesar declared, and then he took off his jacket and threw it down on the ground.

Had he decided to have a fist fight, then?

The young man didn’t seem to have anything against fisticuffs – he moved along an arc, avoiding the section of space frozen in time by the spells. And despite his likeable, attractive appearance, somehow I was reminded only too clearly of what Pastukhov had called him.

A tiger…

Just at that moment I heard an engine roaring. Battle Magician Jermenson and the team had finally caught up with us. He leapt out of the SUV before it had even stopped, I think. Garik put up a Magician’s Shield on the run, and to judge from its power he must have used one of the Watch’s amulets. Jermenson moved out in front, Alisher fell in behind him with his head inclined and his hand pressed to his heart – it looked as if he was preparing to work as a reserve power source, pumping Jermenson full of energy.

The blond young man stopped, assessing the disposition of forces. To be quite honest, it wasn’t clear what move he was thinking of making in a situation like that – he was facing four Higher Magicians, as well as a couple of field operatives who might be less powerful but had pretty good battle experience.

Jermenson moved his hand up through the air, as if he was lifting an invisible load. The ground bulged up between him and the stranger, sprouting into a pillar three metres high. The pillar shuddered, taking on the features of a grotesque human figure, beside which the boxer Nikolai Valuev would have looked like a slim, handsome but rather undersized fashion model.

I had come across golems before. Rather more often, perhaps, than I would have liked purely for educational purposes. But this was the first time I had seen a golem created – and so quickly, without any runes embedded in the clay, without any obvious programming.

‘Oh, these sly Jewish tricks!’ said Olga.

The young man was clearly disconcerted by the golem. He made some elusive kind of movement – and a monstrous weight seemed to crash down onto the golem, crumpling it and driving it back into the ground. Only that didn’t bother the golem. It soaked into the ground and immediately oozed out of it at another point, much closer to the stranger, reaching out a massive hand for him.

A rapid flickering of fingers, a brief fluttering of lips – and the arm reaching out to the stranger started falling to pieces, collapsing onto the ground in lumps of clay, as if some invisible meat-slicer was chopping it off as it advanced.

The golem paid no attention to this and simply carried on reaching out its arm. The falling clay wriggled on the ground and was absorbed back into its feet, so it didn’t lose any mass at all.

‘She ilekh adonia nekhbad mi a makom a ze!’ shouted Jermenson.

The young man took a step back. Cast a quick glance in our direction. Then at Jermenson.

And at that precise moment the darkness behind the stranger thickened and condensed into a black ink blot dangling in the air. A spiked leg that looked like a limb of a gigantic praying mantis stepped out of the blot, to be followed by its owner – a demon every bit as large as the golem.

Unfortunately, the cavalry arrived too late for the fight. The young man cast a quick glance at the demon, spread his arms – and disappeared. Without any flashes, glimmers or sparks. Without opening any portals, dissolving into the air or sinking down through the ground. He simply disappeared.

It was only reasonable from his point of view. If the heads of the Night Watch and the Day Watch both attack you, and they have a few Higher Others tagging along – the best thing to do is beat it, and quick.

The golem hesitated for a moment and then soaked back into the ground. Golems created to carry out a single assignment usually crumble into dust. But this one didn’t crumble – it didn’t seem to think that its assignment had been completed.

‘Hello, Zabulon,’ said Gesar.

The demon metamorphosed into a man – an ordinary, rather short man of indeterminate age with an undistinguished face. It had always amazed me that the Dark Others moved through the lower layers of the Twilight in such horrifying forms. I used to think there were dangers that I didn’t know about lurking down there, but it was a long time now since I’d been an inexperienced novice magician. I’d walked the Twilight through and through, on all its levels, and I knew there weren’t any bloodthirsty beasts in it.

Or was I wrong after all? Maybe the Dark Ones followed their own paths, unlike ours?

‘And hello to you, Gesar,’ Zabulon said with a nod. ‘What kind of loathsome beast was that?’

I laughed. And I kept on laughing until understanding dawned on Gesar’s face.

‘Did you see a repulsive, malicious demon, Zabulon?’ he asked.

The Dark One frowned. And nodded.

‘I saw a cunning, elderly man,’ said Gesar. ‘Anton, I surmise, saw some pleasant, straightforward young guy. Jermenson saw a wise old Jew. Olga saw a wily, guileful woman.’

‘You forgot to add that you didn’t just see a cunning, elderly man, but a very modest, cunning, elderly man,’ said Olga.

‘Yes, and one with a very high opinion of himself,’ snorted Zabulon. ‘But, as it happens, he only disappeared when I showed up.’

‘Maybe he just has a well-developed aesthetic sensibility…’ Alisher muttered, but in a low voice. It’s not really a good idea for an ordinary Light Magician to quarrel with Higher Dark Ones.

The three of us – Gesar, Zabulon and I – went up to the flat where the small Tolkov family lived. Zabulon had politely confirmed in advance that the Day Watch did not claim any right to initiate the boy-Prophet, but said that he would be interested in taking a look at the child. Simply out of general interest, because a genuine Prophet only turns up once or twice in a generation, and he had never met a Prophet with a ‘tiger’ hot on his trail.

‘Do you have any ideas about all this?’ Gesar asked him as we were riding up in the lift.

‘Yes, Gesar. I do. That it’s a good thing you met this boy first and he’s not our headache.’

‘Well, well, the Day Watch forgoes a Prophet,’ Gesar muttered. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t have fought the “tiger” for him?’

‘I would have,’ Zabulon confessed regretfully. ‘Greed would have forced me to. But I certainly didn’t like to see that four Higher Light Ones couldn’t even frighten a single stranger, let alone defeat him.’

‘And who is he, this stranger?’ I asked.

Zabulon looked at me and something very hostile flickered in his eyes. No, there wasn’t any personal vendetta between us at the moment. But we’d done each other plenty of bad turns in our time. It had just happened that when I was a rank-and-file member of the Watch I’d managed to foul things up for Zabulon… and become his personal enemy. Right now, though, we had a quasi-truce.

But Dark Ones don’t become Higher Others because they know how to forgive and forget. They simply know how to wait.

‘I don’t know, Anton, I don’t know,’ Zabulon answered, with a sigh. ‘At first I thought we were dealing with a Mirror Magician after all. But a Mirror only reflects Others’ power, not their appearance, and the way he behaved…’ Zabulon stopped short.

‘Finish what you were saying,’ Gesar said amicably. ‘You might as well.’

‘By the way, you haven’t already forgotten that I helped you out just now, have you?’ asked Zabulon.

We walked out of the lift onto the eleventh floor.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Gesar. ‘And I’m ready to help you…’

‘The Day Watch,’ Zabulon corrected him.

‘The Day Watch of Moscow,’ Gesar agreed, ‘in a situation where to do so will clearly not be detrimental to the goals and interests of the Night Watch or human beings.’