The New Watch

Many Others, especially those who have been alive for more than a hundred years, have a pretty poor grasp of electronics and modern technology in general. In this respect, Gesar is a sophisticated Other, a smart guy who tries to get some idea of what’s what.

And that was why, for this supremely polite search, he had sent really young Others who weren’t powerful magicians but who understood very well where a microchip with the recording of the prophecy could be hidden.

These young guys had checked everything but had not found anything, although they had special instruments that I’d only seen in the movies, capable of identifying any memory card at a distance even if it wasn’t plugged into anything. I had thanked them – they’d found a couple of flash sticks that I’d lost around the flat a long time ago …

But they didn’t find the prophecy.

Naturally. I hadn’t made a copy on an electronic medium. I’m not an idiot.

I opened the drawer of the sideboard, crammed with all sorts of old electronic junk, and took out an old Sony minidisc player. A dead-end branch in the development of electronics, the kind of thing that no one uses now except people who are especially fond of shocking the public (or who are exceptionally thrifty). The battery in it had died a long time ago.

But there was a separate container that could be attached, and I stuck a battery in that, then screwed the container to the player (all fair and square, a sound, reliable screw, not some kind of flimsy clip-on fastening) and pressed the play button. Vysotsky’s hoarse voice started sounding in my earphones:

In remote Murom’s dark, secret, forested parts,
Evil spirits sow fear in all travellers’ hearts.
Like wandering corpses, they wail and they howl,
And the birds there don’t sing, they mutter and growl.

Oh, it’s dark and creepy lost in the murk!
In enchanted swamps female hobgoblins lurk,
They’ll grab you and drag you down out of sight.
Fierce wood demons wander the woods day and night.
On foot or on horseback, they’ll give you a fright
Oh, it’s dark and creepy lost in the murk!

Once lost in that deep forest gloom,
Peasant, merchant or soldier brave,
Drunk or sober, they are all doomed
And there’s no way they can be saved.
Whatever reason brings them there
They all simply vanish into empty air …

I didn’t really have to listen, but I did. Right to the end of the song. To the final couplet.

The spirits fought a battle that ended it all,
They all fought to the death, as old greybeards recall,
And that was what made the dread disappear.
Now people go to the forest with nothing to fear
And now it’s not dark and creepy at all!

Then I pressed the stop button and glanced round furtively. The doors of the bedroom and the nursery were closed. Naturally, I couldn’t check the Twilight right now but our home was surrounded by such powerful defensive spells that even Gesar and Zabulon working together would have taken hours to break through them. The spells were an entitlement of my rank – and since Nadya lived here …

Did I want to hear the prophecy?

I knew now for certain that it existed. Arina had said as much. There was no point in hoping that Kesha hadn’t pressed the button on the toy phone. Or that the prophecy was about the price of oil or the presidential elections …

I sighed, closed my eyes and pressed the button.

Silence. With crackling, like from an old-fashioned record.

‘You are Anton Gorodetsky, Higher Light Magician …’ a childish voice said quietly. My hands started trembling as they clutched the minidisc player – someone wasn’t just walking over my grave, they were dancing jigs and reels on it. ‘Because of you … all of us will be released …’

Released? What did that mean?

‘The Tiger’s coming, the Tiger’s coming, the Tiger’s coming,’ said Kesha, suddenly speaking rapidly, almost incoherently … ‘A long time. A long, long time … Nadya Gorodetskaya! Nadya can do it, Nadya can …’

I actually jerked up off my chair when the hasty muttering was interrupted by my daughter’s name.

‘You can’t divide anything by zero, you can’t divide anything by zero …’ the voice reminded me like the feverish ravings of some star pupil. ‘Anything multiplied by zero is zero, anything multiplied … Kill the Tiger! Kill the Tiger and you kill the Twilight! Kill the Tig—’

The recording came to an end. The toy phone only had a small memory chip.

A few seconds of silence – and Vysotsky started singing again in mid-line …

In a strange country everything’s queer,
You could get lost, you could just disappear.
It can raise goose bumps thinking too long
About all the strange things that could go wrong.
The ground cracks apart, raising a doubt:
Will you leap boldly, or just chicken out?
And that’s the basic complication
Of such a tricky situation.

I took off the headphones, turned the player off and tossed it back into the drawer.

Basically, I’d understood quite a lot.

‘The Tiger’s coming, the Tiger’s coming for you …’ No comment required.

‘The Twilight is falling asleep … not enough Power, not enough, not enough … the prophecies have been waiting … A long time. A long, long time.’ The Twilight was short of Power? That was kind of strange. Was there really not enough grief and joy in the world? Well – let’s just accept it. ‘The prophecies have been waiting …’ Which prophecies did that mean? The one that Wen-yan had not made known? The one that Arina had ‘retarded’? Possibly.

I imagined the flood of emotions that would be precipitated by the destruction of Russia – or China … It wouldn’t be a momentary thing, it would last for years, decades. It would be insanity. The world was imperfect enough already, it was full of conflicts, torn apart by small wars and global crises. And even if peace and prosperity were established throughout the world, human beings were such brutes, they’d always find some reason to suffer!

Well, okay, let’s accept that the Twilight is short of incoming Power. Assume that’s a fact.

‘Nadya can … You can’t divide by zero, you can’t divide by zero … Anything multiplied by zero is zero, anything multiplied by zero …’ I thought I understood what this meant, too. Nadya was a Zero-Level Enchantress. An Absolute Enchantress. In theory there were no limits to her power. Of course, she didn’t really understand how to control it … but that was only a matter of practice.

What did ‘you can’t divide by zero’ mean? Not in mathematics, but in this particular case? And what did ‘anything multiplied by zero is zero’ mean?

I looked at the closed doors of the nursery and the bedroom again. I crept out into the hallway, feeling like a criminal, and took the cigarettes and the lighter off the shelf. I don’t smoke at home, not even on the balcony – but I had just realised that I really needed a smoke now. I pulled on my anorak, went out onto the balcony and closed the door firmly behind me. I lit up and launched a thin stream of smoke into the night sky.

Who were the Others?

Rational beings, capable of using Power.

The Twilight, with the Tiger as its embodiment, was also a rational entity, capable of using Power.