‘As I understand it, you’ve decided to do away with the chalice,’ Arina said. ‘I’d like to watch that. May I?’
‘I’m going to burn it,’ I said. ‘And don’t try to change my mind.’
Something elusive glinted for a moment in her eyes. Could it really have been relief?
‘I swear that I won’t! But can I just watch? And then I’ll leave! I swear—’
‘I’ve had enough of your oaths!’ I growled. ‘You should be thankful that the children are here. Nadya, Kesha! Stand over there, in the corner! I’m just going to burn this lump of wood, then Arina will say bye-bye and leave. Okay?’
‘Can I say “See you later, alligator”?’ Arina asked, smiling sweetly.
‘How come you have such a good knowledge of 1950s slang?’ I asked. ‘You were asleep then!’
‘I’ve been watching a lot of movies just recently,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the modern ones very much, they’re spiteful. But fifty years ago people knew how to make good-hearted films.’
‘A good-hearted Baba-Yaga,’ I snorted and prepared to strike the match. Arina watched me attentively, not looking as if she wanted to interfere. But one of her hands was tightly clenched on something. ‘The Minoan Sphere!’ I said, realising what it was. ‘Put it on the floor and take a couple of steps back!’
She didn’t argue. That should probably have put me on my guard. She opened her hand, showed me the small sphere of white marble … so that’s what you look like, you famous Minoan Sphere, the Inquisition’s headache number one. Then she squatted down, carefully placed the sphere on the floor and set it rolling in my direction. Either the floor of the flat wasn’t very even, or Arina’s hand trembled, but the sphere rolled under the shoe locker.
‘Anton, I’m playing fair and square.’
Oh, but I don’t believe in honest Witches at all – and not very much in honest Others …
‘No sudden movements,’ I said, just in case. I lit the match and threw it into the oven, trying to keep my eyes on Arina.
There was a flash of flame. Quiet a powerful one – the concentration of petrol fumes must have built up. Nadya even cried out – but, like the fine young fellow he was, Kesha stepped forward towards the stove, to face up to the danger.
‘That’s it,’ I said to Arina. ‘Happy now?’
Arina was gazing intently into the oven.
‘So, you made up your mind after all, daddy?’ Nadya asked in a deliberately loud voice, evidently ashamed of being frightened.
‘Yes. No one should hear this prophecy,’ I said. ‘It has already … done enough damage today.’
Arina suddenly laughed.
‘Ah, Anton,’ she said. ‘Straight, honest, simple and naive. So you still haven’t realised?’
‘Daddy, I think the prophecy is revealed when the chalice is destroyed …’ whispered Nadya.
I managed to turn round in time. I even managed to take a step towards the open oven, towards the wooden chalice blazing with a bluish flame …
But the next second the threshold of destruction that Erasmus had implanted in his handiwork was reached.
And I was on the edge of a dark forest at night.
About five metres away from me I could just barely make out a village track running through the darkness. Beyond it were fields, and beyond the fields were dim lights that I guessed at rather than saw with my eyes. Yes, the electricity supply wasn’t so good back then – or rather, there wasn’t any.
There were two shadows darting about in silence on the track. One was almost incorporeal and moved with incredible speed. The other was moving fast, too, but was far more material – and it was carrying a glowing blue whip in its hand. The blows of the whip occasionally connected with its adversary, but didn’t seem to cause him any serious injury at all.
I suddenly realised that I was starting to respect Zabulon. He hadn’t abandoned his underage pupil to be torn to pieces by the Tiger. The Great Dark Magician had accepted the challenge of a combat that should have been his last.
I heard strange sounds beside me, as if someone was being sick. I dragged my eyes away from the magical duel, and saw a thick old oak tree. There was a hole in the oak at about the level of my chest, and protruding from the hole were Erasmus Darwin’s legs. He ought to have been fourteen years old but he seemed to be only the same height as Kesha, and he had only half as much bulk as the modern young Prophet. So the idea of historically increasing rates of development was clearly no myth after all.
‘He’s coming for us,’ I heard suddenly in a barely audible whisper from the hollow tree. I took a step closer and leaned down towards Erasmus’s back. The illusion of the world around me was complete – I even caught a faint smell of sweat and fear coming from the boy. ‘The Executioner’s coming to make you talk, the Executioner’s coming to make you keep quiet …’
Yes, that was right. They used to call him the Executioner then.
‘The Executioner needs blood, the Executioner needs flesh …’ Erasmus muttered. ‘The Executioner will drink the blood, the Executioner will eat the flesh, the Executioner will take the soul … Not enough, not enough, not enough blood, flesh, souls … Never enough, never enough, never enough … the Executioner is falling asleep …’
That night, separated from me by an abyss of time, was warm. But I was shivering violently.
He was saying almost the same thing as Kesha!
Only in different words … the words of his own time …
‘The Executioner will come, the Executioner will never stop, the Executioner doesn’t sleep, the Executioner is ready for work … Only a maiden, born through deception, the daughter of a Great Enchantress who has rejected her Power, the daughter of a Great Magician who has taken Power that is not his own, only a girl, a girl will be able to kill the Executioner … the girl Elpis, the daughter of deception, the girl Elpis, the Executioner’s sister …’
Feeling as if I was about to black out, I noted that Erasmus had received a good classical education. In Greek, Elpis means the same as Nadezhda means in Russian: Hope.
I had to leave. Turn away. Plug my ears. Not listen.
But I couldn’t do it.
And what good would it do anyway, when my daughter Nadya, the boy-prophet Kesha and the old witch Arina were there, like disembodied shadows beside me, listening to Erasmus’s mutterings?
But not a single human being …
‘The Executioner is all the Power of the world,’ Erasmus continued, making his confession to the tree. ‘The Executioner is all the magic of the world. The girl can kill the Executioner. The girl can kill magic. Kill the Executioner and you kill magic! Kill the Executioner and you kill magic …’
But no, after all there was nothing really terrible happening. It was the same prophecy. The same one that Kesha had spoken. It hadn’t frightened the Tiger, so what was the meaning of this situation?
It was a preamble.
An introduction.
A harbinger of the real prophecy.
I flung my hands up and covered my ears. But the world around me was only an illusion, living according to its own laws, and I carried on hearing everything.
First – Zabulon’s despairing cry. And then his strangled howclass="underline" ‘Mercy! I will leave, Executioner! Spare me!’
If he ever learned that I had witnessed his shame I was done for. No treaties or obligations would ever stop Zabulon from thirsting for my death a hundred times more keenly than before …