Part 29 (1/2)

”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 ha.s.sle 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 a.s.saults 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 n.o.body 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.