Straight down…
Any Other could have heard me and Butusov, even though the only real sound was coming from the little button earphones and faded away completely only one step away from me.
We entered the chamber where the Tribunal was taking place together. Me and the fallen angel.
I tried to be just and kind,
And I wasn’t frightened or surprised
By the people gathering down on the Earth
To watch an angel fall…
Gesar. Zabulon. The Inquisitor Maxim. The Dark Ones I’d been drinking coffee with and talking to for the last few days: Edgar, Yura, Kolya, Anna Tikhonovna… The Light Ones I’d been sparring and fighting with recently, bending
the rules almost to the point of breaking them: Ilya, Garik, Tolik, the shape-shifter, Bear. Others I didn’t know, both Dark and Light, including some who were obviously not connected with the Watches. Two in loose robes-Inquisitors, I supposed.
And a light enchantress with a face contorted in grief. People and Others have expressions like that when they’ve just lost loved ones.
And the wind swirls into their open mouths, Filling them with white snow, or sweet manna, Or simply feathers flying down after
The one who has fallen, like a fallen angel…
And then I was dragged irresistibly up the transparent stairway, to the top of the mysterious pyramid I had been climbing all this time; at almost the very same moment, the two Inquisitors in robes rescinded the prohibition on higher magic. Svetlana hit me with that cloud I had seen, which had been ready to burst and explode at any moment. A field of Power that made a multi-megaton explosion seem tiny and insignificant.
Time stopped
And I understood everything. Everything that had happened. Everything that was happening now and everything that was destined to happen in the immediate future. I understood, and swallowed hard to keep down the lump that had suddenly risen in my cramped throat.
I had become the most powerful magician on Earth. A magician beyond classification. A Caliph for an hour… no, only for an instant… The only one in this dilapidated round hall who had no future.
There are some Others who have no future…
A Mirror! I was nothing but a Mirror. The Mirror of the World. A weight cast into the dangling pan of the scales when the balance between the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness is disrupted.
The Light had acquired a new Great Enchantress, but the Darkness had not been given an equally strong adept.
The Light had been granted a chance to settle accounts with the Darkness once and for all.
But there is no Light without Darkness. And so the Twilight had produced me. It had found a strange Other who had not yet inclined to one side or the other, an Other with a pristine, pure aura, and then colored that aura Dark.
It had taken away my former memories and given me the ability to reflect and absorb others’ Power. The more powerfully I was struck, the more powerful I had become, jumping up onto the next step. And when there was nowhere left to jump, that was the summit, and beyond that there was only eternity and the Twilight-the Mirror was no longer needed. Because the Mirror had itself become capable of disrupting the equilibrium.
The Twilight was waiting for me. Eternal Twilight. I didn’t know what would happen to the body of Vitaly Rogoza, who until only recently had been an Other with no destiny. I didn’t know what would happen to his memory and his personality-it all happens differently every time a Mirror comes. I only knew that the one who had become aware of himself in that frozen park in Nikolaev on his way to catch a train to Moscow would disappear forever, be transformed into an incorporeal, powerless shadow, a ghostly inhabitant of the Twilight.
Or simply into a part of the Twilight… the Twilight that is not as inert as we are all used to thinking…
I understood all this in the brief instant before I drew in all of Svetlana’s Power. She imagined that she had lost Anton Gorodetsky. And she imagined it because of a freak coincidence, because I walked into the Tribunal hall with a mini-disk player exactly like Anton’s, with a copy of his disk in the player and with Anton’s favorite song in my ears and my soul. I also understood that the Inquisition knew the truth. But none of the Inquisitors would say a word to reassure the Others of Moscow, who believed I’d had a skirmish with Anton and Anton had been killed.
The Light Ones knew his favorite songs.
“Die!”
No, I won’t die, Svetlana. Or rather, I will, but not right now. I am a Mirror. In trying to destroy me, you grow weaker, and I only grow stronger. I can already see what lies ahead of you-thirty or fifty years spent on slowly restoring all the Power you’ve squandered so insanely. You’ll have to collect together what you’ve lost, crumb by crumb. For three, or maybe more, decades-long enough for the Darkness to prepare for another attempt to disrupt the equilibrium by whichever side it happens to be. You have long years ahead of you to find happiness with Anton, or not to find it.
But in any case, throughout those years you will be equals.
Maybe you have lost your powers, but I’m giving you a chance… a chance that I don’t have.
The music stopped. The magical blow had been too much for the player-technology reacts badly in general to powerful magic-and it shattered into shards of plastic. My cap went flying toward the door, and my jacket split in several places at once.
I was barely able to keep my feet, but I managed it.
“A Mirror!” Gesar exclaimed, his voice filled with an entire gamut of indescribable feelings and intonations. “The third time, and the third time for the Dark Ones!”
“Well, we don’t set up global social experiments, my dear colleague!” said Zabulon, the head of the Day Watch, making no effort to conceal his triumph. Today he was one of the victors. And the Light Ones had suffered a defeat.
But just how many times had this already happened-or the exact opposite?
Svetlana, drained and shattered, had been crushed by grief only a moment earlier, but now she cried out, unable to conceal her joy: “Anton!”
He was standing by the door. Anton Gorodetsky. Light magician. Alive and unharmed. He had followed me up.
“Thank you, Anton!” Zabulon said to him in a tone of immense satisfaction. “You carried out my assignment perfectly. I hope you’re pleased with your reward?”
“Assignment?” Gesar exclaimed. “Anton?”
Zabulon laughed quietly as he stood up. The head of the Night Watch only gave his triumphant enemy a swift glance and then looked back at Anton.
But Anton walked up to Svetlana, who was so happy she couldn’t understand a thing, put his arms around her, whispered, “Just a moment,” and moved toward me.
For a few seconds we looked each other in the eye. Enemy to enemy. Other and non-Other. I don’t even know how to put it so that it sounds right. There are always at least two truths, after all.
“Take this,” said Anton.
And he handed me his disk player to replace the broken one.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I took the remains of mine off my belt, took out my disk without speaking, and stuck it into the player he had given me, as if that were the most important thing of all now. And I thought: Now the Inquisitor will get up and say that I can go.
I was right, of course. Magicians of that level don’t make mistakes, even if they are non-Others.
“In the name of the Treaty,” Maxim declared as dryly and dispassionately as ever, “since it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that Vitaly Rogoza is not an Other in the ordinary meaning of that word, the actions of the Night Watch relative to Vitaly Rogoza are not a matter for investigation by the Inquisition. Likewise, Vitaly Rogoza does not come under the terms of the Treaty. He is free to pursue his own destiny.”
As if I’d ever really had one. Me and the other Mirrors who had come before me, and the young boy Egor, whose time had not yet come…
“The Inquisition has concluded its consideration of all the cases,” said Maxim, glancing around at the magicians present. “Do the Watches have any comments or suggestions?”
I pressed Play and walked away. In my tattered jacket I looked like a cross between a street bum and a weird scarecrow. But who cared?
The disk player I’d been given was working in random mode. And yet again it picked out just what was needed from the dozens of tracks. Kipelov and Mavrin. “Troubled Times.” All I had to do now was sing along.
So I did.
Troubled times!
The specter of freedom on a horse.
Blood up to your knees,
Like in some crazy dream.
The people amuse themselves
Killing the Old Gods,
The people pray,
Waiting for Righteous Words!
A comet in the sky,
A sure sign of imminent disaster.
Fallen Warriors of the Light
Are burned on bonfires.
Warriors of the Darkness
Have encircled the world.
Thousands of birds
Tumble down like rain.
Troubled times for the one who no longer has the right to call himself Vitaly Rogoza. For the one who rose, only to fall. For the fallen angel… the dark angel. Troubled times for you and for the Others. The end of the millennium.
The time when it’s impossible to tell the Light from the Darkness, or the Darkness from the Light. A time of deaths and battles. Troubled times.
We don’t know who we are-
Children of the red star,
Children of the black star,
Or of the fresh graves…
The dance of Death is simple and terrible,
But until the hour strikes,
The sins of all our lives
Are punished by these troubled times!
I don’t know whose child I am either. I only know one thing: The troubled times usually punish those who have not committed any sins for the sins of others. Or if they have committed any sins, they’re not the ones they’re punished for. But I wasn’t allowed any choice. I wasn’t given any destiny.
We’re still alive.
Some will be saved, some will not
On a wild impulse
They put the lights out in our fortress,
The flag torn down
Is the sign
Of surrender to our enemies,
But you will not take it,
It’s a lie—
For now we’re still alive!
I am alive for now. And I’m singing. I’m singing, even though I know that Kipelov and Mavrin’s next song contains the following lines:
Don’t ask-I won’t take you with me.
Don’t look-I don’t know the meaning of life.
Don’t wish to learn another’s secret
That’s all-I am only a spirit, I am vanishing!
I’m only a spirit. I’m only a Mirror. A Mirror that has reflected everything it was made to reflect. But I can’t help asking and believing. I am leaving now, only to vanish, but I ask, I hope, I want to believe-take me with you! Take me!
I believe.
I hope.
I believe.
I…
Story Three
-«?»—
ANOTHER POWER
Prologue
-«?»—
YUKHA MUSTAJOKI FLAGGED DOWN THE CAR-HE WAS THE SENIOR MEMber of their little group now. Yari Kuusinen and Raivo Nikkilya squeezed into the backseat of the old Zhiguli without speaking as Yukha took the seat in front.
“Take us to She-re-me-tie-vo,” he said, speaking with emphatic clarity. Strangely enough, Russian had been the language of Mustajoki’s childhood, although he’d managed to forget most of it afterward. But then he’d always had a talent for languages, and now he lived near the Russian border and made regular drinking trips to St.
Petersburg. The others preferred the ferry to Sweden-on the overnight trip you could get really drunk on hard liquor bought in the duty-free shop, sleep it off during the day (who needed Stockholm, anyway?), and then indulge your expensive pleasure again on the way back. But Mustajoki had stubbornly kept on traveling to St. Petersburg.
“Drive quickly and careful-ly,” he said.
The driver drove. Quickly and carefully. Taking foreigners to the airport was a sheer delight for him. An out-of-work engineer making a living as a freelance taxi driver didn’t often land a plum job like this. Especially at a time like this, just before the New Year, when the year 2000 was coming up and everybody was out working away, trying to make sure there’d be food for the festive table and good presents for the family.
The three Others sitting silently in the car weren’t listening to the driver’s thoughts, although they could have, of course.
After they’d already passed the Ring Road, Yukha turned to his comrades and said, “Are we really leaving then, brothers?”
Yari and Raivo nodded sympathetically. It really was hard to believe that it was all overall the interrogations by the Night Watch, the visits by somber members of the Inquisition staff, the vigorous efforts of the Day Watch’s adroit female vampire advocate, who was as well known among human beings as she was among Others.
They’d broken free. Broken free, been released from this terrible, cold, inhospitable city of Moscow, although they couldn’t go home just yet: They were on their way to Prague, to where the Inquisition’s European office had just relocated. But they had been released. With their rights restricted, with the obligation to register when they arrived anywhere, but even so…
“Poor Ollikainen…” Raivo sighed. “He was so fond of Czech beer. He used to say Lapin Kulta was the best beer in the world. He’ll never drink beer again…”
“We’ll drink a mug of beer for him,” Yari suggested.
“Three mugs,” Yukha added. “He was the most worthy of the Regin Brothers.”
“And what about us?” Yari asked after a moment’s thought.
“We are worthy too,” Yukha agreed. “We did our duty.”
For some reason when he said this all three of them lowered their eyes.
The small sect of Dark Others that called itself the Regin Brothers had existed in Helsinki for almost five hundred years. They were among the small number of Others who had not officially accepted the Treaty, but since they never committed any serious violations of its provisions, the Watches turned a blind eye to this. The Light Ones even seemed to be quite glad that twenty or thirty Dark Ones occupied themselves with harmless rituals, chanting, and archaeological explorations. The Dark Ones had made a couple of attempts to involve the Regin Brothers in the work of the Day Watch, but then they just gave up on them.