"Hang on..."

Anton concentrated, remembering the movements. He raised his right hand, made a pa.s.s in front of Igor's face, then pulled his hand sharply downward and back up again, curving his fingers and cupping his hand.

"d.a.m.n you..." Igor groaned in a choking voice and went dashing for his suite. Anton followed him slowly. He looked at Igor's hunched-over back through the open door of the toilet and reached out to him through the Twilight.

Igor began groaning.

The sobering-up spell isn't very complicated, but it's not very pleasant for the person it's cast on.

Two minutes later Igor came out of the bathroom. With his hair wet, his eyes sunk into his head and looking as pale as death.

"A pale horse..." Anton muttered. "Okay... Now you do it to me."

Igor eagerly made the pa.s.ses, and then Anton leaned down over the toilet bowl. A few minutes later, after he'd washed his face and drunk some nasty-tasting water from the tap (the thirst had hit him immediately), he walked back into the room. Igor was already clearing away the remains of their drinking session. He looked at Anton and said mockingly, "A black horse..."

Anton went over to the refrigerator, took out several bottles of mineral water, pulled the top off one, and collapsed into a chair.

Igor took a second bottle from him. They drank water for a while in blissful silence. Then Igor admitted guiltily, "Yes... we got plastered."

"Toy horses!" said Anton. He smashed his fist down on the table and swore. "No, it's shameful, the nonsense we thought up."

"It all seemed very logical somehow," Igor said in an embarra.s.sed voice. "Those d.a.m.ned Brothers... so the fourth one's alive too."

"He must be," Anton said with a shrug. "All I knew was that Gesar went after him in the Twilight and caught up with him..."

"Well, of course... why would he want to kill a suspect? He handed him over to the Inquisition. Probably right there in the Twilight. Anton, maybe we were right after all?"

"Are you still a bit tipsy?" Anton asked.

"No, I'm totally sober now... d.a.m.n, I can't even get drunk properly! Yes, it's all nonsense. Zabulon wouldn't try to drag some ancient magician back out of the Twilight. What good would that do him? And as for staging the end of the world, creating an Antichrist..."

"And anyway, Fafnir wouldn't do for the job," Anton said. "He's not up to it. Wouldn't even come close."

"So all that stuff we came up with is nonsense?"

Anton looked at the sheet of paper, with its grease spots from salami and wet rings from their gla.s.ses. When had they managed to mess it up? He thought they'd been very careful.

"I'm afraid the bit about Svetlana isn't nonsense. But as for all the rest... Why did we get so excited over the number eighty-eight? What's so mystical about that?"

"It's kind of smooth and rounded, it reads the same in both directions..." Igor waved his hand through the air and burst into laughter. "Yes, you're right. It's drunken nonsense."

Anton picked up a felt-tip pen that had fallen on the floor and crossed out the circle with "Regin Brothers" written inside it. He said: "They're not in the game. It looks like they completed their mission by charging the Mirror with Power. This is what we should be interested in, Igor..."

Igor looked at the circle with his own name in it. He sighed.

"I'd be glad to believe in my own special mission. To think I'd done something to really upset Zabulon and the Day Watch. But..." He spread his hands helplessly.

"Igor, you're the key," said Anton. "Do you understand? If we can understand why Zabulon is trying to get rid of you in order to fight Svetlana, then we'll win. If we can't, then the game's his."

"There's Gesar too. And from what I hear, he's coming this morning."

"We'd better try to manage without him," said Anton, sensing the note of irritation in his own voice. "His decisions are too... too global."

Edgar poured himself some more flat champagne, took a swallow, grimaced, and thought wryly: Only aristocrats and degenerates drink champagne in the morning. And you, my dear fellow, don't look much like an aristocrat...

The old watchman's habit of thinking all the time, in any situation, had not abandoned Edgar even during his nocturnal amus.e.m.e.nts. Last night Edgar had carried on thinking about what the leaders of the Moscow Watches were planning for this Christmas... but that hadn't prevented him from enjoying what he was doing.

Right, then, Edgar thought. What have we got... We need to sort everything out neatly. Right down to the final detail.

What could Zabulon squeeze out of the present situation? Edgar needed to construct a mental model of his chief.

A Tribunal that had drawn in forces from both Watches. Not the most important ones, but by no means the lowest either. Two magicians, both from the top ten. Edgar and Anton. There would be observers too. There was no doubt about that. And there was no doubt that during the actual session of the Tribunal neither side would make any moves-they would be haggling to extract some advantage for themselves from the indifferent and unbiased Inquisition.

But was it indifferent? Edgar had no doubts about its being unbiased. He'd lived a long time as an Other, and never, not even once had he had even the shadow of a doubt concerning the actions of the Inquisition. The servants of the Treaty had always been cool and decisive. Someone had once said that the Inquisition didn't judge who was in the right and who was in the wrong, but who had violated the Treaty. That was the essential world view of any Inquisitor. Edgar had matured enough to understand that, but he still didn't understand what it was that made the Inquisition act that way and not any other.

He wondered if the Higher Magicians understood it. Gesar and Zabulon.

So, the Tribunal. The Light magician Igor Teplov could either be acquitted (which was not desirable) or found guilty. In the first case, the Night Watch would keep a third-level magician who was temporarily unfit for combat, but still powerful and, more important, highly experienced. Edgar had come up against Teplov before that battle in South Butovo, although only in pa.s.sing, immediately after the war in the memorable operation Ashes of Be-lozersk. Back then the Moscow and Tallinn watches had operated in the most surprising places, such as the Vologda region. They didn't have enough men... Or rather, Others. The Dark Ones and the Light Ones were both short of numbers.

The other option was that the Night Watch would lose the magician forever. The question was: So what? Igor Teplov was not who he seemed to be. Or rather, there was something about him that was only obvious to top-flight magicians. All in all, it looked very much as if Zabulon was stubbornly and consistently aiming at two goals in the enemy's camp: Igor Teplov and Svetlana Nazarova. And in doing that he had been quite willing to sacrifice his own love, Alisa. Edgar still hadn't made out any logical connection between the battle in Butovo, the duel at the Artek camp, and the rather confused events that had accompanied the Dark Mirror's visit. But for him it was enough to sense very clearly that there was one. There was definitely a single thread running through all these battles and intrigues, connecting them all together, and it led straight back into Zabulon's hand.

All right, any attempt to eliminate a future Great Enchantress was quite justified and understandable. But why had Zabulon started scheming against the magician Igor? Why him especially? And why right now, and not earlier, when he was weaker and more careless?

There was only one answer that fit: Igor had only become dangerous after Svetlana had joined the ranks of the Night Watch.

All right. Let's move on.

The resurrection of Fafnir. You couldn't imagine a better time and place than the ones chosen: on the eve of the year 2000, in the center of European necromancy. How was this connected with the Tribunal and the Teplov-Donnikova case?

That was the problem.

Edgar sipped gloomily at his champagne, thinking that he was very short of time-he only had until the evening. So he took the only possible decision: to pay a visit to the local Day Watch office right away and request all available information about the duel between Siegfried and Fafnir, and also study the relevant section of the Necronomicon.

Edgar was a powerful enough magician to know about the mechanism for the resurrection of a great Dark One and understand which of the necessary conditions could be met at present and which couldn't.

The German girl was still sleeping serenely: Edgar took pity on her and didn't wake her up. He washed, shaved, and got dressed, gently touched her sleeping mind, and went out into the morning snow of Prague.

The Day Watch office was located on Vyshegrad, right beside the Valtava River, in the three-story brick building of a private house with a water pump that clearly still worked even though it was so old. The handle of the pump was like a twisted, pointing finger. Following tradition, Edgar got out of his taxi some distance away to give his colleagues a chance to spot him and decide what to do, if anything.

His colleagues were on the ball-they spotted Edgar about three hundred meters from the door. He felt a Light touch on his aura and opened himself up-exactly enough for the magician who was scanning him to realize that a Dark One was approaching, a Dark magician, a second-level Dark magician, coming on business. Just like that, increasing the dose of information each time.

Of course, Prague was a European capital, but it wasn't Moscow. The Beskud on duty-the only guard, as it happened, gave Edgar a toothy smile.

Another Beskud, Edgar thought, surprised. Are they more common in Prague then? This is already the second one...

There were only six Beskuds registered on the territory of the former USSR: two in Turkmenia and one each in the Crimea, Belorussia, Yakutia, and Kamchatka. Edgar knew that for certain, because fifteen years earlier he had a case outside Estonia in which all six of them had testified as witnesses.

The Beskud's Twilight image was almost cla.s.sical.

"Greetings, colleague!"

"Good morning."

Of course, in the Twilight there were no language barriers.

"What brings you to our bastion? Business? Or simply a courtesy visit?"

"Business. Where's your archive here?"

"The second floor down, and then you'll see for yourself."

The second floor down, thought Edgar. So they have a multilevel bas.e.m.e.nt... "Thank you. So can I go on down?"

"Of course. A Dark One is free to go wherever he wants, isn't that so?"

Edgar sighed. That was right, but not entirely...

"The elevator's over that way," the Beskud told him.

"Thank you," Edgar said again and set off in the direction indicated.

A very, very old elevator took him down to two floors below street level. And that wasn't the deepest level: There were another five hidden under the ground. The Prague Watch was certainly firmly established!

The vestibule in front of the elevator was absolutely tiny: four meters by four. There was a door on the left and one on the right; the plaque on one said "Library" and the plaque on the other said "Computer Room."

Let's start with the library, thought Edgar. In Fafnir's and Al-Hazred's time there weren't any computers... at least not in the modern meaning of the word.

Edgar stepped toward the door on his left. It was closed, but not locked.

It was a cla.s.sical library: a large hall with about ten tables and long rows of shelves with books. One glance at their spines was enough to understand that these venerable tomes remembered more than many of the Others...

Edgar stopped, and just at that moment an incredibly thin Other emerged from behind the shelves. A vampire.

And a Higher Vampire-Edgar realized that immediately.

The ordinary vampires that were quite common in Moscow were the junior members of the team. The cannon fodder that Anton Gorodetsky had mentioned. They had hardly any magic, and even a degenerate Dark magician was still more powerful than they were. But Higher Vampires were a quite different matter, although for some reason there weren't any in Moscow, or anywhere in Eastern Europe-with the exception of the Czech Republic and Romania.

"Good morning. Can I be of any a.s.sistance?"

"Good morning. I'm interested in material on one of the magicians of the past."

"Who exactly?" the vampire inquired.

"Fafnir. The Dragon of the Twilight."

"Oho!" the vampire said respectfully. "He was a really mighty magician. One of the most powerful Dark Ones in the entire history of mankind. What exactly are you interested in?"

"The circ.u.mstances of his death. The reasons for his duel with Siegfried, the prehistory, the details... In short, I want to make a comprehensive study of this outstanding individual. But unfortunately, I only have a few hours in which to do it. And in addition I'd like to model the operation of bringing him back from the Twilight..."

The vampire smiled sadly. "Unfortunately, that's something that is effectively impossible. It would require interventions of such power and intensity that the right to make them could not be earned even by putting all-let me emphasize that-all the Dark Ones of the world into hibernation for a hundred years."

"Nonetheless," said Edgar, with a sweeping gesture of his hand. "I'd like to solve this problem, if only on paper."

"Then you should take a look at Al-Hazred's Necronomicon," the vampire advised him. "It describes all the necessary interventions for the rematerialization of essential beings with some precision. Are you a theoretical necromancer?"

Edgar smiled more broadly than before.

"Oh no! I've never really dealt with necromancy at all. But I've developed an interest..."

"Then you did right to come to Prague. People here know their necromancy, and there are any number of specialists... But unfortunately they are all theoreticians, and of course you understand why."

Edgar really did understand why. Because since the Treaty had been signed the Inquisition had only sanctioned rematerialization twice, and both times only temporarily. The Tribunal needed to question witnesses, and sometimes there really was an opportunity to bring a dematerialized Other back from the Twilight. Such opportunities had been exploited twice, but after questioning, the witnesses had gone back to the Twilight.

Edgar couldn't believe that a magician of Fafnir's level hadn't set up some loophole in advance to allow for his own rematerialization. He must have done it once he reached a certain level-as a matter of fact, Edgar was hoping to reach that level himself some day. He hoped with equal justification never to allow himself to be dematerialized, but life was such a strange business. It was always throwing up surprises, especially in conditions of continuous war.

"Go on through," said the vampire, indicating the tables. "I'll bring the books in a moment. I believe it's not the human experience of the time that interests you, but the chronicles of the Others. Is that so?"

"Of course, dear colleague. Of course."

"I'll just be a second."

The vampire really did come back very quickly. He had obviously been working as the custodian of the library for more than a decade and knew his books very well.

"There," he said, laying two large volumes on the table. The first was a huge, large-format book in an old binding of dull brown leather-the Necronomicon in Gerhardt Kuchelstein's translation; the second was a bit more modest-not so big, with a florid t.i.tle that covered half a page: A Life and Exposition of the Glorious Doings and Also the Prophecies and Numerous Unparalleled Discoveries of the Great Dark Magician Well-Known among Others Under the Name of Fafnir, or the Dragon of the Twilight by Johann Jetzer, Urmongomod. It looked like an original.

The t.i.tle of Jetzer the Urmongomod's book was probably much more archaic in style, but Edgar didn't know Old High German, so he had to read the book through the Twilight. When you do that specific stylistic features are smoothed out and the text is leveled down, becoming much easier to understand.

Edgar ran his eye diagonally across The Doings of Fafnir : As was only to be expected, the contents of the thick volume interpreted events rather differently from the two Eddas and the Song of the Nibelungen. First, it was clear that Sigurd (a.k.a. Siegfried, a.k.a. Sivrit) and Regin and Khreidmar and Fafnir himself were all Others. Naturally, Khreidmar wasn't Fafnir's biological father and Regin wasn't his real brother. By means of long and carefully calculated plotting, Sigurd managed to make the Dark magicians quarrel and destroyed them all, some through the agency of Others, and some with his own hands. Sigurd's goal, of course, was not treasure at all, not useless pieces of metal and glittering stones. Sigurd and the others were searching for the heritage of the dwarf Andvari, but the Urmongomod's work did not explain what that was. It could have been some ancient and powerful artifacts or simply knowledge (in the form of books, for instance). Anyway, eventually Sigurd had killed everyone and taken possession of the heritage of Andvari, but what happened after that, Edgar didn't have any time to find out. Fafnir had been Sigurd's penultimate victim, before Regin. It seemed that Fafnir had taken certain secrets with him to the Twilight after all, but that didn't really bother the magicians of those times, who weren't bound by any Treaties or codes of law, and acted without any concerns about the Inquisition, since it hadn't existed then.

The main thing that Edgar had learned was that Fafnir possessed certain forgotten knowledge in the area of higher battle magic (which didn't appear to have helped him much in his duel with the crafty Sigurd), and he had taken this knowledge with him into the Twilight. So Zabulon could easily try to get hold of that knowledge.

Having arrived at this basically rather obvious idea, Edgar turned to the Necronomicon.

The first thing he discovered was that rematerialization was not at all the resurrection of an Other who had been dematerialized. It all turned out to be much simpler and more ba.n.a.l.

It was more like castling in chess. Someone withdrew into the Twilight, and in his place someone emerged from the Twilight. The higher the level of Power of the individual rematerialized, the more powerful the person dematerialized had to be. But the levels didn't have to be identical-a certain amount of leeway was allowed. If what the Urmongomod wrote about Fafnir was true, it meant the Dragon of the Twilight could be exchanged for a second-or third-level Dark magician, but only if the overall available energy input was adequate. And such a required input could easily be provided by acting out the Apocalypse-with the turbulent emotions of thousands of people generating such a squall that Fafnir would probably emerge reborn from the Twilight full of Power, a mighty Dark magician thirsting for vengeance and freedom. The freedom he had lost so long ago.

What would he do, this Great Magician from the past who had never even heard of the Treaty of the Inquisition?

How was Zabulon planning to handle him? And was he planning at all? The Dragon of the Twilight in the skies over Europe at Christmas-what could possibly be more insane and terrifying?

Let's a.s.sume that if Fafnir runs wild and goes off burning cities and causing all sorts of devastation, if he simply goes for stupid brute force, then even people will be able to pacify him. With rockets. That Light flying ace who loved the Chicago Bulls will zap him with some devastating explosive device from his Phantom or his Harrier...

they wouldn't kill him, but they'll pacify him. But what good will that do Europe? What does Europe want with nuclear mushrooms and her cozy little towns burned to cinders by Fafnir's flames?

But most likely Fafnir wouldn't simply run berserk; he would use his experience and cunning, and then watch out, Europe. Then there would be far more devastation and far more victims.

But why did Zabulon want all this?