Sixth Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
“The Light One,” the Two-in-One announced.
I couldn’t stop myself—I turned and looked at Nadya. And I nodded to her, because right then she was feeling really, really bad, and there was nothing I could do to support and protect her.
“I am a Higher Light One, Nadezhda Gorodetsky,” said Nadya. Her voice was matter-of-fact—the very sound of it made my blood run cold. “I annul the Covenant of Blood. I hate it; perhaps there was a time when it was the best answer, the correct solution, but that time was long ago. I abrogate it forever. Let there be nothing but good or nothing but evil, if that’s what people deserve. But we’ve had enough of this balance. A balance of good is always a balance of evil too. I . . . I . . .”
“You must name a sacrifice,” the Two-in-One said.
“My sacrifice . . .” Nadezhda began, and stopped, looking at me. I nodded to her encouragingly. There was nothing that she could do about this. Absolutely nothing. “My sacrifice is Anton Gorodetsky, my father. I . . . I love him because he is my father and that’s a good enough reason. And I hate him! I hate him because I should be standing where he is and he should be standing where I am, but he understood everything before I did and did as he wanted! And that’s probably awfully noble of him, only it’s terribly, terribly, treacherous. And I’d give away my Power, I don’t need it. I’d be willing to live as an ordinary person, but I’m too weak to kill you . . . But I’ll get stronger and I’ll totally pulverize you. I’ll go right through the Twilight and burn you out completely, or I’ll invent special Twilight defoliants and poison every one of its levels. Do you think I’m a fool and I don’t realize where you hide and what you’re made of, you trashy, creeping blue garbage?”
Silence fell, broken only by Nadya’s heavy breathing.
“The Watch of Six has spoken,” the Two-in-One declared. “The Covenant of Blood is abrogated. No longer will anyone preserve the balance of good and evil among people. Henceforth your destiny is in your own hands.”
For just a tiny, fleeting moment I thought he would turn and walk away. As the Tiger had once done.
For just a fleeting moment I thought my daughter’s name was a magic talisman that would save me even on the brink of the abyss.
“I accept your sacrifice,” the Two-in-One said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him raise his immense hand and hold it out toward me. But I didn’t want to look around. I looked at my daughter and my wife, who was being held firmly by Olga. And somewhere nearby was Gesar, who had made me the person I was; and my newly acquired Dark granddad, Zabulon; and the sharp-tongued old witch Arina, with her misplaced love; and the young Prophet Kesha, with his arms round Nadya’s heaving shoulders; and the brave, good man who had grown out of the frightened boy Egor; and those battle-hardened old stagers Jermenson and Glyba . . .
But I looked at my daughter and my wife, trying to smile as sincerely as I could, so they would remember that smile and know that I was proud of them.
And then something icy blue and fiery red struck me in the back.
EPILOGUE
A GRAVEYARD IS A JOYLESS PLACE AT ANY TIME OF THE YEAR. In spring, when the air is cool and fresh and the trees are hazy with new green leaves, thinking about death is especially distressing. In the heat of summer, when the smell of the hot earth rises up into the air, a graveyard seems like a lurking predator, biding its time before it pounces on you. In autumn, under the gray, rainy sky, a graveyard is dreary and repulsive.
But the worst time of all is winter. The hard ground refuses to yield to the spades, and the thought that someone is about to be left in that frozen earth sends chilly shivers up and down your spine.
It was an old cemetery, right in the center of Moscow. Funerals were only held here very, very rarely, and always for people who were either very famous or very rich. Of course, it didn’t have the prestige of the famous Vagankovo and Novodevichy cemeteries, but anywhere in the center of Moscow is pricey for the living and the dead.
“We don’t often bury one of our colleagues,” said Zabulon. “Usually there’s nothing left to bury . . . and we don’t get together with the Light Ones very often either.”
He simply stood there for a while, wrapped up in his warm coat, then removed his gloves, took a wreath with the inscription FROM THE DAY WATCH OF MOSCOW from the shivering assistant who was standing behind him, placed it on the fresh grave, and stood back again with his head lowered.
“Farewell. You served loyally,” he said.
Gesar never wore gloves. Maybe he had been used to the cold since the long-gone days of his youth in Tibet, or maybe he liked flaunting his folksy simplicity. The wreath FROM THE NIGHT WATCH OF MOSCOW was handed to him by Olga.
“A hard destiny,” he said. “And a hard death. But . . . you were one of us and you always will be.”
He lingered on the spot for a while, then looked at Zabulon, took a flask out of his pocket, and held it out to the Dark One.
“Here . . . let’s see them off in the Russian style.”
“A fine old Russian custom,” Svetlana remarked in a low voice, “swigging French cognac in a graveyard . . .”
She took hold of my hand.
Zabulon let Gesar take a mouthful first, took one himself, and then held the flask out to me.
“Anton?”
“I won’t, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I have to take care of my health now. Good health is the most precious thing a human being has.”
“Anton, stop that,” Zabulon said, looking at me reproachfully. “We’ll take care of your health. And if you need treatment, we’ll use all the resources of both Watches. You’ve earned it.”
“I don’t want to drink to them,” I said, nodding at the grave where the monstrous body of the Two-in-One—the former Light Magician Denis and former Dark Magician Alexei—lay in an immense coffin. “He killed me, after all. One side of me.”
“We all reach the end of the road sometime,” Gesar replied. “Others are immortal, but . . .”
“And people are simply mortal,” I said. “Sorry, but I won’t drink. They’re not to blame. But people don’t drink to their own killers.”
“You could say he took it easy on you,” Gesar reminded me. “He could simply have killed you. Finally and completely. Disembodied you. Incinerated you. Extracted every last drop of your Power.”
“He did kill me,” I said. “By making me a man, he killed me. Maybe not right now, but in twenty years . . . Or thirty. And that’s it.”
“That’s the way people live, Dad,” said Nadya.
She was standing beside me, holding Innokentii’s hand.
“Okay,” I said, and took the flask from Zabulon.
The cognac seared my throat.
I closed my eyes, focusing on my inner sensations, and tried to look through my eyelids, into the Twilight.
But of course I couldn’t do it.
“Rest in peace, may the Twilight be gentle,” I muttered, handing back the flask.
Everyone was gradually drifting away. It was a joint funeral, held by both Watches, but the Light and Dark Watchmen were going to separate wakes. The two minibuses standing at the gates of the cemetery would take them in different directions.
Kostya Saushkin waved to me, but he didn’t come over. And I think he was right. The Twilight had left him here on earth and given back to him what takes the place of life for vampires. We had been friends once, but that didn’t alter the fact that I had killed him and he had killed me.
“Come on,” said Semyon, walking up to me. “We have to go. It’s the custom. Don’t feel angry with Denis. He got wiped out in the line of duty.”
“I’ll drop around later,” I said.
Semyon stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He was embarrassed.
“But Anton . . . You can’t . . . The restaurant’s blocked off with a Sphere of Negation . . . You won’t get through on your own.”
He was right, of course.
“I’ll bring him in,
Svetlana, Nadya, and I deliberately walked at a leisurely pace. And Kesha, of course. He was right there. Maybe he and Nadya would go their separate ways in a couple of months . . . or a couple of hundred years. But Kesha obviously saw something more optimistic in their future.
I’d have to put up with him.
“There are famous people here,” Nadya said in a quiet voice. “Look, there’s a famous film director, he made cartoons! And there’s a writer . . . Oh, I’ve read his books!”
“Yes, a very respectable gathering,” I said. “The Two-in-One should be pleased.”
“Stop it, Dad!” my daughter told me. “He didn’t kill you, that’s all that matters!”
I remembered how Svetlana had sobbed as she hugged me. I sat there on the floor, pawing at the icy remnants of my shirt on one arm and the singed tatters on the other. Compared with the Two-in-One’s usual blow, it was no more than a goodbye kiss.
But it was a genuine goodbye, because at that moment the Two-in-One was lying dead on the floor. And the former Watchmen of the Light and the Darkness had died in his gruesome body.
I didn’t even understand straightaway what had happened. I was too glad just to be alive. Not even Gesar’s embarrassed stare and the crestfallen look in Zabulon’s eyes alerted me.
Or even the way that Svetlana suddenly stopped sobbing, drew back, and peered at me . . .
Then Nadya told me, with the ruthless frankness of youth: “Dad, you’re human!”
Yes, I had become a human being. A perfectly ordinary person. Without even a hint of Other powers. With a “magical temperature” far higher than the threshold at which premonitions and the ability to perform paltry magic tricks are manifested.
I hadn’t run out of steam, the way Others can do sometimes. I wasn’t squeezed dry, the way Svetlana was after she fought the Mirror Magician.
I had irrevocably become a human being.
“I think part of the Two-in-One kind of felt sorry for you,” said Nadya. “That’s the reason, isn’t it?”
I didn’t want to offend my daughter. She’s a clever girl. But she’s also an Absolute Enchantress and it would be useful for her to be wise too.
“No, Nadya,” I said. “That part of the Two-in-One was cruel and was very angry with me. That’s why I’m still alive.”
Nadya didn’t say anything to that.
The minibuses had already left by the time we got into the car—Zabulon hadn’t asked for his present to be returned. Svetlana took the wheel and I didn’t object—without the ability to read the lines of probability, I would have been like a blind man on the road.
“You’re not entirely right, you know, Anton,” Svetlana said. “You didn’t become human because someone felt sorry for you or hated you. You became a human being because you were human. You remained a human being, even after living as an Other for a quarter of a century. That’s a very rare thing. And that’s why you’re still alive, even after the Two-in-One killed the magician in you.”
I nodded. She was probably right. That was probably the way it was. But not even my wise wife could tell me how to live now.
I’d just have to learn.
People manage it, don’t they?
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SERGEI LUKYANENKO was born in Kazakhstan and educated as a psychiatrist. He began publishing science fiction in the 1980s and has published more than twenty-five books.
ANDREW BROMFIELD (translator) is a founding editor of the Russian literature journal Glas. He is known for his acclaimed translations of Victor Pelevin and Boris Akunin, and his work has been short-listed for numerous translation prizes.
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COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIXTH WATCH. Copyright © 2016 by Sergei Lukyanenko. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published as Шестой ДОЗОр in Russia in 2015 by AST.
English translation © Andrew Bromfield 2016.
First Harper Paperbacks edition published 2016.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition August 2016 ISBN 9780062428455
ISBN 978-0-06-242844-8 (pbk.)
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Sergei Lukyanenko, Sixth Watch