Matvei nodded. He obviously didn’t feel like objecting anymore. I think he was seriously concerned that he’d spent the night in a tent with some kind of monster who could disappear in front of his eyes. And who knew what he might be capable of apart from that?
“Just tell me one thing: How do I get away from here?”
“That way,” said Matvei, waving his hand in the direction of the path I’d followed to get there. “The trains are already running.”
“And is there a highway over there? I’d rather hitch a ride.”
“There’s a highway. Right behind the railroad.”
“Excellent,” I said in delight. “Okay, be seeing you! Thanks again. Give the birthday girl my congratulations… and I tell you what… give her this…”
It was remarkable how easily I managed the simple, but unfamiliar spell. I put my hand behind my back, touched a frozen twig, broke it off… and held out a living rose, only just cut from the bush. There were drops of dew glistening on the small green leaves and the petals were flame-red. A fresh rose looks very beautiful in a snowy forest.
“A-a-a…” Matvei mumbled as he automatically took the rose. I wondered if he’d give it to the birthday girl or just bury it in a snowdrift to avoid the hassle of having to give long, awkward explanations.
But I didn’t ask. I withdrew into the Twilight again. I certainly didn’t want to drag myself over the frozen snow again. And what had been good for the previous day, when I thought I was running away from Gesar, was no good today, when I was rested and full of fresh Power.
There was something else I’d forgotten… Ah, yes! The hat. That wasn’t mine either, and I was still wearing it. I tossed it onto the jacket… and set off.
I moved in leaps of a hundred or two hundred meters, opening weak little portals at the limit of my visibility and stepping through them, eating up the distance like a giant.
By day the clearing looked perfectly ordinary. All of its magical charm had completely disappeared. It was obviously no accident that the genuine romantics and lovers of freedom-the Dark Ones-had chosen the night as their time, and not the day, when all the dirt and garbage of the world assaults your eyes, when you can see how unattractive and cluttered our cities are, when the streets are full of stupid people and the roads are full of stinking automobiles. Day is the time of bonds and chains, of duty and rules, but Night is the time of Freedom.
And for a genuine Other, nothing can take the place of that Freedom. Neither ephemeral Duty, nor service to cheap, fuzzy ideals invented by someone long before you were even born. That’s all a myth, a fiction, ucho od sledzia-ear of the fish-as our Slav brothers, the Poles, say. There is only Freedom, for everybody alike, and there is only one limitation: No one has the right to limit the Freedom of others. And let the cunning and hypocritical Light Ones seek apparent paradoxes and contradictions in this-everyone who is Free gets along just fine with others who are just as Free, and they don’t get in each other’s way at all.
I had to use my Other powers to stop a car-for some reason no one wanted to pick up a man without any jacket or coat. I had to touch the mind of one of the drivers in his dolled-up Zhiguli 9, the color of wet asphalt.
Naturally, he stopped.
The driver was a young guy of about twenty-five with short-cropped hair and absolutely no neck. His head was just attached in a very natural way directly to his body and his eyes were blank. But his reflexes turned out to be quite fantastic. I seriously suspected that he could have driven the car even if he was unconscious.
“Eh?” he said to me when I’d made myself comfortable in the back, beside his huge leather jacket.
“Drive on, drive on. To Moscow. You’ll let me out on Tverskaya Street.”
And I touched him gently again through the Twilight.
“Ah…” the young guy said, and set his Zhiguli moving. Despite the slippery road and the trance he’d been put in, he drove at over a hundred kilometers an hour. The car held the road so magnificently, I wondered if he had special tires on it.
We drove into Moscow from the northwest side after turning onto the Volokolamsk Highway, which meant we sliced through half of the megalopolis very quickly, driving in a straight line almost the whole time, straight to the Day Watch office on Tverskaya Street.
I was lucky to have found such a remarkable driver, and the highway encouraged him to put his foot down to the floor. Plus, we rode a wave of green lights.
As we were driving past the Sokol metro station, I realized they’d spotted me.
Me and the Talon.
But in the middle of Moscow it’s almost impossible to catch a Zhiguli 9 hurtling along in a straight line without changing lanes.
I got out on Tverskaya Street and handed the neckless driver a hundred. Rubles, not dollars.
“Eh?” he gasped out and started gazing around. Of course, he didn’t remember a thing, and now he was straining his meager intellect to solve the almost insoluble puzzle of how he’d got from a suburban Moscow highway to the very center of the city.
I didn’t interfere and left him alone with his unsolved puzzle.
He had really tremendous reflexes: the Zhiguli set off almost immediately. But the young guy’s face was turned toward the side window, with his jaw hanging open. It was still like that when he drove out of sight. I crossed the street and headed for the entrance to the office.
The lobby was full of cigarette smoke and a tape deck-a Phillips boom box-was quietly playing some song with a
laid-back, powerful melody. The voice was so hoarse and low I didn’t realize straight away that it was Butusov: The wind is cold through the open window,
And long shadows lie on the table,
I am a mysterious guest in a silver cloak,
And you know why I have come to you.
To give you strength,
To give you power,
To kiss your neck,
Kiss to my heart’s content!
At the sight of me, the young vampire who had his eyes half-closed and was blissfully lip-synching along, was struck dumb. But the other guard on duty, an equally young alchemist-magician, was already gabbling his report into the phone.
“They’re waiting for you,” he told me. “Ninth floor.”
Even though he’d been struck dumb, the vampire had managed to call the elevator.
But I suddenly got the feeling I shouldn’t get into the elevator, and I certainly shouldn’t go up in it. I just shouldn’t, and that was all.
“Tell them I’m alive and everything’s okay,” said that someone there inside me.
I went back out onto the street.
I was being guided again. Without the slightest hesitation I turned left-toward Red Square.
I still didn’t know what was driving me and what for. But I could only obey the Power inside me. And I could also feel that Fafnir’s Talon had come to life-it was breathing.
Every meter of ground here, every square centimeter of asphalt, was saturated with magic. Old magic that had eaten its way into the stone of the buildings and the dust on the street.
The massive form of the State Historical Museum towered up on my right. I didn’t even know if it was still open or whether it had been transformed into a casino by the latest fundamental shift in the history of long-suffering Russia. But anyway, I had no time to find out. I walked on past.
The cobblestones of Red Square, which remembered the leisurely steps of the czars, and the tramping boots of revolutionary soldiers, and the caterpillar treads of Soviet armored monsters, and the columns of May Day demonstrations, seemed like the embodiment of Moscow’s unshakable permanence. The city had stood here through the ages. It would always stand here, and nothing-not the squabbles of ordinary human beings, or even the eternal altercations between the Watches-could shake its calm grandeur.
I walked out into the square and looked around. Nearby on my left GUM-the old state department store-was teeming with life. On my right were the battlements of the Kremlin wall, with the pyramid of Lenin’s Mausoleum rising up in front of it. Could that be where I was being led?
No, not there. And that was good. No matter what people in Russia felt about their former leader, it was a sin to disturb the peace of the dead. Especially of those who had died irrevocably, forever-he wasn’t an Other… and it was a good thing he wasn’t.
I walked across the square without hurrying. A line of official government cars snaked out of the Kremlin and tore off into the side streets. The Execution Site greeted me in silence. The statue of Citizen Minin and Prince Pozharsky watched as I walked by. The bright-painted domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral breathed a sigh.
Power. Power. Power…
There was so much of it here that an Other who had exhausted himself could restore his strength in moments.
But nobody would ever do anything of the kind, because it was strange, alien Power. It belonged to no one. It was unruly and uncontrollable, the Power of the past centuries. The Power of dethroned czars and general secretaries of the Communist Party. Touch it and it would blow you to pieces.
I looked around yet again.
And I spotted him.
The Inquisitor.
It’s impossible to confuse an Inquisitor with anyone else, either Light Ones or Dark Ones, let alone an ordinary human being.
The Inquisitor was looking straight at me, and I couldn’t understand why I’d only just noticed him now.
He was alone, completely alone, outside and above any worldly balances of power, alliances, and treaties. He embodied Justice and the Inquisition. He maintained Equilibrium. I didn’t need to ask what he was there for.
I walked right up to him.
“You did right not to disobey,” said the Inquisitor.
Somehow I knew his name was Maxim.
He reached out his hand and said, “The Talon.”
There was no imperious tone to his voice, not even a hint of pressure. But I had no doubt that anyone would obey that voice, up to and including the chief of either of the Watches.
I reached gloomily inside my sweater, with obvious regret.
The Talon was seething, processing the surrounding Power. The moment I held it in my hand I was swamped by a dense wave of it. The Power given to me by the Talon rushed into every cell of my body; it felt as if the whole world were ready to go down on its knees and submit to me. To me. The owner of Fafnir’s Talon.
“The Talon,” the Inquisitor repeated.
He didn’t add anything else or tell me not to do anything stupid. The Inquisition is above giving meaningless advice.
But I was still hesitating. How was it possible to give up voluntarily a source of such inexhaustible Power? An artifact like that was every Other’s dream!
I automatically noted the redistribution of energy as a Light portal opened up nearby. Of course, it was Gesar, the chief of the Moscow Night Watch.
The Inquisitor didn’t react to the appearance of the unexpected witness. Not at all. As if no portal had even opened up and no one had surfaced out of the Twilight.
“The Talon,” the Inquisitor repeated for the third time. The third and last. He wouldn’t say another word. I knew that.
And I also knew that even if all the Dark Ones of Moscow appeared beside me, it wasn’t worth trying anything.
They wouldn’t help me. On the contrary, they’d take the Inquisitor’s side. The intrigues played out around the Talon could only continue until the guardians of the Treaty put in a personal appearance.
I squeezed my eyes shut and drew in as much Power as I could hold within myself, almost choking on the pressure. With a trembling hand, I held out the case with the artifact in it to the Inquisitor. As I did so, I could just sense the vague desire that Gesar was struggling to control-to dash forward and take possession of the Talon.
But naturally, the chief of the Night Watch didn’t move a muscle. Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.
The Inquisitor glanced at me. I probably ought to have read satisfaction and approval in his glance: Well done, Dark One, you didn’t flinch; you did as you were told, clever boy.
But I couldn’t see anything of the kind in the Inquisitor’s eyes.
Not a thing.
Gesar was gazing at us with open curiosity.
Without hurrying, the Inquisitor put the case with the Talon into the inside pocket of his jacket and then disappeared into the Twilight without even saying goodbye. I stopped sensing him instantly. Instantly. The Inquisition has its own paths.
“Ha,” said Gesar, looking away to one side. “You’re a fool, Dark One.” Then he looked straight at me, sighed, and added: “A fool, but clever. And that’s remarkable.”
Then he left too, quietly this time, without any portal. I could still sense him for some time in the deeper layers of the Twilight.
I was left on Red Square, out in the piercing wind, alone, without the Talon after I’d already got used to its Power, with no warm clothes, still wearing the same sweater, trousers, and shoes, and my hair was as tousled as a film actor’s in some dramatic solo scene. Only there weren’t any viewers to appreciate this fine shot, now that Gesar had gone on his way too.
“You really are a fool, Vitaly Rogoza,” I whispered. “A clever and obedient fool. But then, maybe that’s the only reason you’re still alive?”
But the person inside me suddenly came to life and reassured me: Everything’s happening as it should. You did the right thing by getting rid of Fafnir’s Talon. I was overwhelmed by such a blissful, unshakeable certainty that I was right, that I even stopped feeling the cold, piercing wind.
Everything was just fine. Everything was right. Children shouldn’t play with atom bombs.
I twitched my shoulders, turned around, and strode off in the direction of Tverskaya Street. I’d only gone a few steps when I came across the entire top level of the Day Watch (the only ones missing were the magician Kolya and-naturally- the chief), plus about fifteen mid-level agents, including Anna Tikhonovna’s young witches, three vampire brothers, and a rather stout werewolf. The entire company was staring at me like idle bystanders gaping at a penguin that has escaped from the zoo.