Las obviously thinks that I already understand something and the reason we’re in such a rush to get back to Gesar is because he definitely understands everything – who this tiger is, why a living man has no aura (and at the same time has lost all interest in life), why spells aimed at him pass straight through him. But in actual fact, I don’t understand a thing. And I expect Gesar will be just as dumbfounded as I am.
Just what is an aura, if you think about it?
It’s Power. The same Power that people produce all the time, but can’t use. The Power flows out of them into space and blankets the whole Earth. We Others produce far less of it – which means we can absorb it from the ambient environment. (The blue moss does pretty much the same thing, only we’re far more efficient – and we can think too!) If there’s no aura, it means there’s no Power … no life energy … the man or Other is already dead.
No, what kind of nonsense is this I’m thinking? No aura? Vampires are dead, they’re in a state of ‘afterlife’, but they have an aura. Their own special vampire aura, but they have it. And my Nadiushka – an absolute enchantress with a ‘zero magical temperature’ – she has an aura, too, and boy, what an aura that is!
I wiped my forehead. I’d never really attempted to come to grips with all the fine details of our existence. I’d always preferred to let the research team rack their brains over that … All these theories are infinitely distant from real life in any case.
So … why do beings who are dead have an aura? And those who don’t radiate any ‘life energy’ at all? And why are they alive … horrifying as it was to put vampires and Nadya in the same category, I forced myself to do it and tried to view the question in the abstract. Without life energy, it’s impossible to live … but the dead and ‘zero-temperature magicians’ don’t produce it …
Stop! It’s all very elementary. They don’t radiate it, but they consume it. Other beings’ Power is what allows vampires to exist after death. So it turns out that’s what keeps Nadya alive too. To refine the analogy … my daughter is like a person whose body doesn’t produce blood. And she lives on constant, continuous transfusions …
I winced and squirmed in my seat. Even just thinking about it was unpleasant. Maybe that was why I’d never gone into the details of how Power, aura and life were interconnected?
Okay, that was all idle conjecture. So Nadya lived on other people’s life energy. She was alive and she was just fine. But how was it possible to take away a man’s Power and still leave him alive? Not kill him, not turn him into a vampire – but transform him into a strange kind of talking puppet?
I didn’t know
‘You’re lost in thought,’ said Las.
‘Uh-huh,’ I confirmed.
‘Listen, I’ve got a question … Higher Others – can they see the soul fly out of the body?’
‘The soul?’ I asked, mystified. ‘Fly out?’
‘Well, yeah. The aura’s the soul, right? So when someone dies, can you see where the aura flies off to? What I’m getting at is that you could figure out where heaven and hell are. If you take two people dying simultaneously at opposite ends of the globe and pinpoint the direction the souls fly off in, then you could triangulate—’
‘Las, the aura is not the soul!’ I objected. ‘The aura is life energy.’
‘Ah, and I thought it was the soul,’ said Las, upset. ‘So the soul can’t be seen?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘And when someone dies, the aura doesn’t go flying off anywhere, it just stops glowing.’
But there was something to all of this. Las’s question, my answer …
But I couldn’t understand what it was, and I ran out of time. We drove under the boom that had risen obligingly to allow us into our car park – and stopped right in front of Gesar.
That’s the difference between a real magician and a beginner like me – experience. And the ability to do a whole heap of things all at the same time. If I’d sent someone off to do a job, and then been keeping close tabs on the action, I could probably have sensed that he was hurrying back with something important to report. Only I would have had to do that deliberately. But Gesar seemed simply to have sensed my approach in between doing everything else – and he felt so concerned that he’d come out to meet me.
‘Tell me,’ he ordered curtly as I started clambering out of the car. ‘And quick!’
All right, then, quick it is … I looked into his eyes and played back the conversation with Pastukhov and the visit to Iskenderov.
‘Let’s go to my office,’ said Gesar and swung round. Putting up a portal from that distance would simply have looked flashy. ‘Call Svetlana.’
‘What for?’ I asked, taking out my mobile.
‘I’ll open a portal to your flat. Tell her to come here and bring Nadya.’
A repulsive, chilly tremor of fear ran down my spine.
‘No, I don’t see any immediate threat,’ said Gesar, without turning round. ‘But I don’t like what’s happening one little bit. And I need all the Higher Ones in Moscow.’
As he walked along, Gesar seemed to falter every now and then, not stopping completely but slowing down for an instant. It looked to me as if he was communicating with the other Higher Ones.
But then – what others? I was calling Svetlana … why wasn’t she answering? … there was Olga, too … and that was the entire complement of the Night Watch’s ‘Magicians Beyond Classification’. The Day Watch only had Zabulon on active service now – they had lots of First- and Second-Level Magicians, but recently things hadn’t gone so well for them with Higher Ones …
‘And what shall I do?’ Las shouted after us resentfully.
‘Call into the science department and have them send Innokentii to me!’ Gesar told him. He liked everyone around him to have some task to perform.
Svetlana finally answered.
‘Anton?’
‘Sveta, Gesar’s going to put up a portal to our flat …’
‘It’s already up,’ Svetlana answered calmly.
‘Grab Nadka and get over here, quick.’
‘Is there some kind of rush?’ asked Sveta.
‘Say they can bring things for a day or two,’ Gesar responded briskly. ‘But they mustn’t dawdle.’
I didn’t like that comment at all. Gesar was acting as if Sveta and Nadya were going to be under siege. But we were talking about a Higher Enchantress here (Svetlana might specialise in healing, but everyone knows that any healing spell can be used just as effectively for attack) and an Absolute Enchantress as well. (The fact that she was only ten years old didn’t make Nadya defenceless. She could set up a perfectly standard Sphere of Negation, but pack so much Power into it that you couldn’t breach it with a cannon.)
‘I heard,’ said Sveta. ‘Right now I’m throwing clean underclothes into a bag … Shall I bring anything for you?’
‘Er …’ I hesitated. ‘Well, a pair of socks, a couple of pairs of shorts …’
‘I’ll take a risk and grab a clean shirt as well,’ Svetlana decided.
When we had almost reached Gesar’s office I decided to speak up after all – the boss wasn’t faltering as he walked along any more, he’d obviously contacted everyone he needed to …
‘Boris Ignatievich, I can see you already understand what’s going on …’
‘I don’t understand a damn thing, Anton,’ answered Gesar. ‘Not a damn thing. I’ve never even heard of anything like this. And it …’ He chewed on his lips, trying to choose the right words. ‘It frightens me.’
He swung the door open and we walked into his office.