Day Watch

"Oh, look at that!" a young, bearded guy who looked like a geologist said when I emerged from the darkness into the light. "Just a light sweater!"

"I'm sorry," I sighed. "I've got a few little problems."

"Sit down!" said someone who had come over to me. They sat me down almost by force and immediately thrust a mug of vodka into my hand.

"Drink that!"

I didn't dare disobey. It burned my throat, but a few seconds later I'd already forgotten it was the middle of winter.

"Styopa! Didn't you have a spare jacket somewhere?" the bearded guy asked, still giving the orders.

"Yes," someone answered from the opposite log, and then ran off briskly to one side, where there were dark tents pitched in the gaps between the trees.

"And I've got a hat," said a plump girl with braids like a schoolgirl's. "Just a moment…"

"Been out in the cold long?" the bearded guy asked me.

"Not very. Only about twenty minutes. Just don't ask how I got here."

"We won't," he replied. "We'll find a place for you to sleep, and a spare sleeping bag too. And tomorrow we're going to Moscow. You can come with us, if you like."

"Thanks," I said. "I'd be glad to."

"We've got a birthday here," Styopa explained as he came up to me, holding a bluish-green ski jacket. "Here, take this."

"Thanks a lot, guys," I said sincerely, thanking them mostly not for the hospitality, but for not asking any u

The jacket was warm. Warmer than it looked.

"And whose birthday is it?" I asked.

One of the girls stopped kissing her latest bearded admirer.

"Mine," she told me. "My name's Tamara."

"Happy birthday," I said. It sounded a bit flat. I felt genuinely sorry that I had nothing to give her as a present, and I felt ashamed to hand her a hundred-dollar bill. It would have been too much like my generous tipping in the hotel.

"What's your name?" the first bearded guy asked me. "I'm Matvei."

"Vitaly." I shook the hand that he held out. "A birthday party in the forest in the middle of winter-I've never been at one of those before."

"There's a first time for everything," Matvei remarked philosophically.

The dogs started barking again and dashed off into the dark night.

"Well, is it Petro this time at last?" the birthday girl asked hopefully.

"Is that you, Petro?" Styopa roared in a surprisingly resonant baritone quite unlike his normal speaking voice.

"Yes," said a voice in the forest.

"And have you brought the champagne?"

"Yes," Petro confirmed happily.

"Hoo-ray," all the girls shouted together. "Hooray for Petro, our savior!"

I felt stealthily under my jacket for the case that must conceal the mysterious Fafnir's Talon. I thought that I could relax until morning and soak in the relaxed atmosphere of somebody else's celebration. The people around the campfire made a point of not singling me out-they filled my mug with vodka as if I were one of them, then handed me a plate of steaming pilaff, as if the light of their fire attracted underdressed travelers out of the forest every day of the week.

It was a great pity there wasn't a single Other among them. Not even an uninitiated one.

Chapter four

–«¦»-

Semyon walked into Gesar's office, froze for a moment just inside the door, and shook his head very slightly.

"He's not in Moscow. Definitely not."

"That's kind of stupid," Ignat snorted from his armchair. "If he's supposed to do something with the Talon in Moscow, then what's the point of opening a portal to somewhere outside the city?"

Gesar glanced sideways at Ignat. There was something mysterious in his glance: The first name that came to mind for it was "higher knowledge."

"Maybe not so stupid," he objected quietly. "The Dark One had no choice. Either stay in Moscow and lose the Talon, or clear out and take the Talon with him, and then try to break back in again. What's bad about all this is that the Brothers managed to get the Talon to this Dark One from Ukraine, and he managed to trick us."

Gesar sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and corrected himself: "No, not us, of course… It was me he tricked. Me."

Svetlana was huddling miserably in the corner of the divan by the window. She started sobbing again. "I'm sorry, Boris Ignatievich…"

So far Anton had been sitting as straight as a ramrod, but now he moved close to her and put his arm around her shoulders without speaking.

"Don't cry, Svetlana. It's not your fault. If I couldn't guess what the Dark One was going to do, then you can't possibly be blamed for anything." Gesar's voice was cool, but basically neutral. The chief of the Night Watch really didn't have anything to reproach Svetlana with-what had happened was simply beyond the range of her present knowledge and skills.

"There's just one thing I don't understand," Olga said abruptly. She was sitting on the pouffe between Gesar's desk and the window, smoking nervously. "If the Dark One's actions couldn't be read in advance at all, doesn't that mean he was acting on intuition? Without pla

"Yes, it does," Gesar agreed. "He prefers to create probabilities, rather than choose from the ones that already exist. It's a pretty bold way of doing things, but it has its dangers. Intuition can be deceptive. And that's how we'll get him."

There was a brief silence; Semyon walked silently across the office and sat on the divan, a little distance away from Anton and Svetlana.

"Actually, there's something else bothering me," Gesar said darkly, reaching into his pocket and taking out a pack of Pall Malls. He looked at it in surprise, put it back in his pocket, and took out a Cuban cigar in a metal tube, a clipper to cut off its tip, and a huge tabletop ashtray. But he didn't open the cigar. "Something quite different."

"The fact that the Dark One had no trouble using the energy of the portal and some of Svetlana's too?" Semyon asked, guessing immediately. "But that was to be expected."

"Why was it?" Gesar asked cautiously.

Semyon shrugged.

"It seems to me that he's more powerful than we think. He simply disguises the fact. In principle Ilya and I, and even Garik, can make use of the Dark Ones' Power. Under certain circumstances. And with certain consequences for ourselves."

"But not so brazenly and not so quickly," Gesar said with a shake of his head. "Remember Spain. When Avvakum tried to draw Power from the Dark portal. Remember how that ended?"

"I remember," said Semyon, not fazed in the least. "All that means is that our Dark One is significantly more powerful than Avvakum. And nothing else."

Gesar looked at Semyon for a few seconds, then shook his head and turned his gaze to Svetlana.

"Sveta," he said in a voice that was noticeably gentler. "Try once again to remember everything that you felt at the time. But don't hurry. And please, don't get upset. You did everything right, the trouble is it just turned out not to be enough."

Semyon glanced in surprise at Svetlana, with the expression of someone who has missed the most interesting thing. "What do you mean, try to remember? Create the image and the job's done," he advised them.

"The image won't materialize," Gesar growled. "That's the whole problem. What does materialize is some kind of gibberish, not an image."

"And have you tried creating a different one?" Semyon asked eagerly. "An abstract image, not co

"She has," Gesar answered for Svetlana. "Any other image is okay, but this one just doesn't work."

"Hmm," Semyon muttered. "Maybe the impressions are too vivid, too oppressive. Remember how I tried for twenty years to recreate the image of the Inferno vortex over the Reichstag when Hitler was speaking. But I just couldn't get it to look real…"