The Twilight Watch (19 page)

I still couldn't see Arina. There was only a vague, dim silhouette
hovering somewhere close to the bookcase, a fleeting, transparent
shadow . . . the witch had retreated to the third level of
the Twilight.

In theory I could go there too.

Only in practice, I'd never tried. For a second-grade magician,
that meant straining his powers to the absolute extreme.

Right now I was too angry with the cunning witch to care.
She had tried to enchant me, to put a love spell on me . . . the
old hag!

I stood by the darkened window, catching the faint droplets of
light that penetrated to the second level of the Twilight. And I
found, or at least I thought I found, the faintest of shadows on
the floor . . .

The hardest thing was spotting it. When I did, the shadow
behaved as I wanted, swirling up towards me and opening the way
through.

I stepped down to the third level of the Twilight.

Into a strange sort of house, woven together out of the branches
and thick trunks of trees.

There were no more books, and no furniture. Just a nest of
branches.

And Arina, standing there facing me.

How old she was!

She wasn't hunched and crooked, like Baba-Yaga in the fairy
tale. She was still tall and upright. But her skin was wrinkled like
the bark of a tree and her eyes had sunk deep into her head. The
only garment she was wearing was a dirty, shapeless sackcloth
smock, and her shrivelled breasts dangled like empty pouches
behind its deep neckline. She was bald, with just a single tress of
hair jutting out from the crown of her head like a Red Indian
forelock.

'Night Watch!' I repeated, the words emerging slowly and reluctantly
from my mouth. 'Leave the Twilight! This is your final
warning!'

What could I have done, considering that she could dive to the
third level of the Twilight so easily? I don't know. Maybe nothing
. . .

She didn't offer any more resistance, but took a step forward –
and disappeared.

It cost me a significant effort to move back up to the second
level. It was usually easier to leave the Twilight, but the third level
had drawn Power out of me as if I was some ignorant novice.

Arina was waiting for me on the second level. She had already
assumed her former appearance. She nodded, and moved on – to
the normal, calm and cosy human world . . .

I had to try twice, streaming with cold sweat, before managing
to raise my shadow.

A
RINA WAS SITTING
on a chair, with her hands resting modestly
on her knees. She wasn't smiling any more, and in general she
was as meek as a lamb.

'Can we manage without any more hocus-pocus from now on?'
I asked as I emerged into the real world. My back was wet and
my legs were trembling slightly.

'Can I stay in this form, watchman?' Arina asked in a low voice.

'What for?' I replied, unable to resist taking petty revenge. 'I've
already seen the real you.'

'Who's to say what's real in this world?' Arina said pensively. 'It
all depends on your point of view . . . Regard my request as simple
female caprice, Light One.'

'And the attempt to enchant me – was that caprice too?'

Arina shot a bright, defiant glance at me and said:

'Yes. I realise that my Twilight appearance . . . but here and now,
this is what I am! And I have all the human feelings. Including
the desire to please.'

'All right, stay like that,' I growled. 'I can't say I'm exactly
dreaming of a repeat performance . . . Remove the illusion from
the magical objects.'

'As you wish, Light One.' Arina ran her hand over her hair,
adjusting the style.

And the little house changed just a bit.

Now instead of the teapot, there was a small birch-wood tub
standing on the table, with steam still rising from it. The TV was
still there, but the wire no longer ran to an illusory power socket;
instead it was stuck into a large brownish tomato.

'Clever,' I remarked, nodding at the TV. 'How often do you
have to change the vegetables?'

'Tomatoes – every day,' the witch said with a shrug. 'A head of
cabbage works for two or three days.'

I'd never seen such an ingenious way of producing electricity
before. Sure, it's possible in theory, but in practice . . .

But I was more interested in the books in the bookcase. I walked
over and took out the first small volume that came to hand, a
slim one in a paper cover.

Hawthorn and Its Practical Use in Everyday Witchcraft
.

The book had been printed on something like a rotary printer.
Published the previous year. It gave the print run – two hundred
copies. It even had an ISBN. But the publishing house was unfamiliar,
TP Ltd.

'A genuine botanical text . . . Do you people really print your
own books?' I asked admiringly.

'Sometimes,' the witch said modestly. 'You can't copy everything
out by hand.'

'Copying by hand isn't the worst of it,' I remarked. 'Sometimes
things are written in blood . . .'

I took
Kassagar Garsarra
down from the shelf.

'In my own blood, mind,' Arina said laconically. 'No abominations.'

'This book itself is an abomination,' I remarked. 'Well well . . .
"Setting people against each other without excessive effort" . . .'

'Why are you trying to incriminate me?' Arina asked, irritated
now. 'Those are all academic editions. Antiques. I haven't stirred
up trouble for anybody.'

'Really?' I said, leafing through the book. '"Soothing kidney
ailments, driving out dropsy . . ." Okay, we'll let you have that.'

'You wouldn't accuse someone who was reading De Sade of planning
torture, would you?' Arina snapped. 'That's our history. All sorts
of different spells. Not divided into destructive and positive ones.'

I cleared my throat. Basically she was right. The fact that there
were all sorts of different magical recipes collected together in the
book didn't constitute a crime in itself. There were things like . . .
'How to relieve the pain of a woman in childbirth without
harming the child'. But then right beside that was 'Killing the
foetus without harming the woman' and 'Killing the foetus together
with the woman'.

Everything the way it always was with the Dark Ones.

Despite these foul recipes and the attempt to enchant me, there
was something I liked about Arina. In the first place, there was
the way she'd dealt with the children. There was no doubt that a
smart old witch could easily have found some monstrous use for
them. And then . . . there was something melancholy and lonely
about her – despite all her power, despite her valuable library and
attractive human form.

'What have I done wrong?' Arina asked peevishly. 'Come on,
don't string it out, sorcerer!'

'Are you registered?' I asked.

'Why, am I a vampire or a werewolf?' Arina asked in reply. 'Now
he wants to put a seal on me . . . the very idea . . .'

'No one's talking about a seal,' I reassured her. 'It's just that all
magicians of the first-grade and higher are obliged to inform the
district centre of their place of residence. So that their movements
will not be interpreted as hostile actions . . .'

'I'm not an enchantress, I'm a witch!'

'Magicians, enchantresses and Others of equivalent power . . .'
I recited wearily. 'You are on the territory of the Moscow Watch.
You were obliged to inform us.'

'There was never any of that before,' the witch muttered. 'The
foremost sorcerers told each other about themselves, the vampires
and werewolves were registered . . . and everybody left us alone.'

That sounded strange.

'When was "before"?' I asked.

'In '31,' the witch said reluctantly.

'You've been living here since 1931?' I said, unable to believe
my ears. 'Arina . . .'

'I've been living here for two years. Before that . . .' She frowned.
'It doesn't matter where I was before that. I didn't hear about the
new laws.'

Maybe she was actually telling the truth. It sometimes happens
like that with old Others, especially those who don't work in the
Watches. They hide themselves away somewhere in the back of
beyond, way out in the taiga or the forest, and sit there for decades
at a time, until the boredom just gets too much.

'And two years ago you decided to move here?' I asked, trying
to get things straight.

'Yes. What would an old fool like me want with the city?' Arina
laughed. 'I just sit here and watch TV, read books. Catching up
on what I've missed. I found an old friend of mine who sends
me books from Moscow.'

'Well, all right,' I said. 'Then it's just the normal procedure. Have
you got a sheet of paper?'

'Yes.'

'Write a statement. Your name, where you're from, year of birth,
year of initiation, if you've ever served in a Watch, what grade of
Power you possess.'

Arina obediently found a piece of paper and a pencil. I frowned,
but I didn't offer her my ball-point pen. She could write it with
a goose quill if she wanted.

'When was the last time you registered or made your location
known to the official agencies of the Watches? Where have you
been since then?'

'I won't write it,' said Arina, putting her pencil down. 'All this
new-fangled paper-scribbling . . . Whose business is it where I've
been warming my old bones?'

'Arina, stop talking like an old peasant woman,' I told her. 'You
were speaking perfectly normally before.'

'I was in disguise,' Arina declared without batting an eyelid. 'Oh,
very well. But you have to drop that bureaucratic tone too.'

She rapidly covered the entire sheet with close, neat handwriting.
Then handed it to me.

She wasn't as old as I'd been expecting. Less than two hundred
years. Her mother had been a peasant, her father was unknown,
none of her relatives were Others. She had been initiated as a
girl of eleven by a Dark Magician or, as Arina stubbornly referred
to him, a sorcerer. Someone not local, German in origin. At the
same time he had deflowered and abused her, which for some
reason she found necessary to write down, adding 'the lascivious
wretch'. So that was it. This 'German' had taken her as his servant
and student – in every respect. Evidently he hadn't been too
bright or too gentle – by the age of thirteen the girl had acquired
enough power to vanquish her mentor in a fair duel and dematerialise
him. And he had been a fourth-grade magician, by the
way. After that she had come under the surveillance of the Watches
of that time. But she had no other criminal acts in her record –
if her statement was to be believed, that is. She didn't like cities,
she had lived in villages and made her living by using petty witchcraft.

After the revolution several attempts had been made to 'dekulakise
her' as part of the communists war against rich peasants . . .
the peasants had realised she was a witch and decided to set the
Soviet Secret Police onto her. Mausers and magic, would you
believe it! Magic had won out, but things couldn't go on like that
forever. In 1931 Arina had . . .

I looked up at the witch and asked:

'Seriously?'

'I went into hibernation,' Arina said calmly. 'I realised the red
plague was going to last a long time. I could have chosen to sleep
for six, eighteen or sixty years. We witches always have to take a
lot of conditions into account. Six years or eighteen was too short
for the communists. I went to sleep for sixty years.'

She hesitated, and then confessed:

'It was here that I slept. I protected my hut as securely as I
could, so that no human being or Other could come close.'

Now I understood. Those were bad times. Others were killed
almost as often as ordinary people. It wasn't too hard to go missing.

'You didn't tell anyone you were sleeping here?' I asked. 'None
of your friends . . .'

Arina laughed:

'If I'd told anyone, you wouldn't be here talking to me, Light
One.'

'Why?'

She nodded towards the bookcase:

'That's my entire fortune. And it's a substantial one. A great
temptation.'

I folded the statement and put it in my pocket. Then I said:

'It is. But there's still one rare book I didn't spot.'

'Which one?' the witch asked in surprise.

'
Fuaran
.'

Arina snorted.

'Such a big boy, and you believe in fairy stories . . .There is no
such book.'

'Aha. And the little girl made up that title all on her own.'

'I didn't clear her memory,' Arina sighed. 'Tell me, after that
what's the point in doing good deeds?'

'Where's the book?' I asked sharply.

'Third shelf down, fourth volume from the left,' Arina said irritably.
'Did you leave your eyes at home?'

I walked across to the bookcase

Fuaran
!

Written in big gold letters on black leather.

I took the book out and looked triumphantly at the witch.

Arina was smiling.

I looked at the title on the front cover –
Fuaran: fantasy or fact?
The word 'Fuaran' was in large print, the others were smaller.

I looked at the spine.

Now I saw it. The smaller letters had faded and crumbled away.

'A rare book,' Arina admitted. 'Thirteen copies were printed in
St Petersburg in 1913, at the printing works of His Imperial
Highness. Printed properly, at night when the moon was full. I
don't know how many of them have survived.'

Could a frightened little girl have seen only the single word
printed in big letters?

Of course she could!

'What's going to happen to me now?' Arina asked woefully.
'What rights do I have?'

I sighed, sat down at the table and turned the pages of the 'fake
Fuaran'. It was an interesting book, no doubt about it.

'Nothing's going to happen to you,' I told her. 'You helped the
children. The Night Watch is grateful to you for that.'

'Why do people wrong for no reason?' the witch muttered.
'You're only harming yourself . . .'

'In view of that fact, and also the special circumstances of your
life . . .' I searched my memory, trying to recall the paragraphs,
footnotes and comments. 'In view of all of this, you will not suffer
any punishment. There's just one question . . . what is your grade
of Power?'

'I wrote the answer "I don't know",' Arina answered calmly.
'How can you measure that?'

'At least approximately?'

'When I went to sleep, I was on the first rank,' the witch
admitted with a certain pride. 'But now I've probably moved beyond
all the ranks.'

That had to be right. That was why I hadn't been able to penetrate
her illusion.

'Do you intend to work in the Day Watch?'

'What can they show me that I haven't seen before?' Arina asked
indignantly. 'Especially as Zabulon's worked his way up to the top.
Hasn't he?'

'Yes,' I confirmed. 'Why does that surprise you? Surely you don't
think he isn't powerful enough?'

'He was never short of Power,' Arina said, frowning. 'It's just that
he abandons his own people far too easily. His girlfriends . . . he
never lived with any of them for more than ten years, something
always happened . . . and the stupid young fools still kept leaping
into his bed anyway. And he really hates Ukrainians and Lithuanians.
When there's dirty work to be done, he calls in a brigade from
Ukraine, and gets them to do it for him. If someone has to take a
risk, then a Lithuanian will be at the top of the list. I thought he
wouldn't last in the job with habits like that.' Arina suddenly laughed.
'Obviously he's become an expert at avoiding trouble. Good for him!'

'Yes, good for him,' I said sourly. 'If you're not going to work
in the Day Watch structures, and you continue to live as an ordinary
civilian, you are granted the right to perform certain magical
actions . . . for personal purposes. Each year – twelve seventh-degree
interventions, six sixth-degree interventions, three fifth-degree interventions
and one fourth-degree intervention. Every two years –
one third-degree intervention. Every four years – one second-degree
intervention.'

I stopped.

Arina enquired:

'And first-degree interventions?'

'The maximum grade of power permitted to Others not in
service with the Watches is limited to their previous grade,' I
commented spitefully. 'If you undergo an examination and are
registered as a witch beyond classification, then once every sixteen
years you will be granted the right to use first-degree magic. By
arrangement with the Watches and the Inquisition, naturally. First-degree
magic is a very serious business.'